Family MELANDRYIDAE Leach, 1815

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• Melyandrida Leach, 1815.

  Type genus:

   Melandrya Fabricius, 1801.

Introduction

This is small family is known in English as the false darkling beetles, but this name is inappropriate for the Australian fauna which is superfically more similar to eucnemids (false click beetles) or scraptiids (false flower beetles). The family is relatively well-represented in Australia, with an estimated 75 species (Lawrence & Slipinski 2013) compared with 420 worldwide. Melandryid adults are generally small and rarely seen, as they are dull coloured and associated with hard bracket fungi and dead wood, where the larvae occur. The Lord Howe Island endemic Talayra brevipilis Lea is a relative giant for the family, up to 14mm long (Reid & Hutton 2019). Some species are able to jump using enlarged hind legs, with large tibial spurs.
The Australian fauna is poorly known and there are no keys to the genera or species. Only one of the two subfamilies occurs, Melandryinae, with three tribes and eight genera (Lawrence & Slipinski 2013; Nikitsky 2018). Most Australian species have been placed in the almost cosmopolitan genus Orchesia. The genus Austrolederia was recently described for a small orchesiine with a close relationship to the South American genus Lederia (Nikitsky 2018).

General References

Lawrence, J.F. & Ślipiński, A. 2013. Australian Beetles. Volume 1 : morphology, classification and key. Collingwood : CSIRO Publishing 561 pp.

Nikitsky, N.B. 2018. A new genus and species of false darkling beetles (Coleoptera: Melandryidae) of the tribe Orchesiini Mulsant, 1856 from Australia. Caucasian Entomological Bulletin 14(2): 161-163

Reid, C.A.M. & Hutton, I. 2019. Citizen science and the art of discovery: new records of large Coleoptera from Lord Howe Island, July 2018. Technical Reports of the Australian Museum Online 28: 1-16. https://journals.australian.museum/reid-2019-tech-rep-aust-mus-online-28-116/

History of changes