Subtribe Stigmoderina Lacordaire, 1857

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Subtribe Stigmoderina Lacordaire, 1857

Stigmoderides Lacordaire, J.T. 1857. Histoire naturelle des insectes. Genera des Coléoptères ou exposé méthodique de critique de tous les genres proposés jusqu'ici dans cet ordre d'insectes. Paris : Roret Vol. 4 554 pp. [33].
Type genus:
Stigmodera Eschscholtz, 1829.

Introduction

The Stigmoderina represent one of the showcase groups of Australian, and certainly world, Buprestidae. This subtribe is one of three that exhibit the extant distribution shared between the Australasian and Neotropical regions. The species of this group are all floricolous, with modification of the head and mouthparts designed to permit the ingestion of floral nectar in a crude suction construction. Other species of floral visiting Australian jewel beetles have similar modifications but it is not yet determined as to whether this has evolved one or more times, e.g. Curis, Neocuris. The classification of this subtribe used here is essentially the same as that presented by Théry (1929).

There are nine genera placed in the Stigmoderina: Conognatha Solier, Dactylozodes Chevrolat and Hiperantha Gistel from the Neotropical Region and the following six Australasian genera.

Stigmodera Eschscholtz originally contained all species now placed within the genera Temognatha Solier and Castiarina Gory & Laporte. Carter (1916, 1929) and Obenberger (1934) used these two taxa as subgenera of Stigmodera, but this was changed with the seminal work on the subtribe by Gardner (1989). The last revision of Stigmodera by Carter (1916) is very much out of date with the large number of species described by his subsequent work and that of others.

The species of the now very small genus Stigmodera are well-defined and can be separated in the key of Carter (1916). A work on the Western Australian species by McMillan (1952) is the most recent publication on this group.

The spelling of the genus containing many of the large species of Australian jewel beetles, whether Themognatha or Temognatha, was discussed by Peterson (1991). This genus badly needs to be revised to clearly establish the synonymies that are apparent to various workers. Currently there are 83 species and 160 available names.

The small genus Calotemognatha Peterson was originally described as a subgenus of Temognatha (Peterson 1991) but has recently been elevated to genus rank (Bellamy & Peterson 2000) as a first step in the revision of Temognatha.

The largest genus of Australian Buprestidae is Castiarina, which currently contains 456 species with 315 synonyms including many unavailable, infrasubspecific names. A number of papers describing new species and proposing new synonyms by Barker (e.g. 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1993a) is leading to a complete revision of this genus (Barker, in prep.). There are several species of this genus that extend beyond Australian shores to Papua New Guinea.

Some of the largest and most spectacular jewel beetles in the world belong to the genera Calodema Gory & Laporte and Metaxymorpha Parry. Both genera contain species from northeastern Australia and New Guinea. A review of these genera is found in the recent colourful works of Sainval & Lander (1993, 1994). A new species from Queensland, C. rubrimarginatum Barker was described twice (Barker 1993b; Lamond & Werner 1993) and subsequently synonymized (Bellamy 1995).

Because this group is so well studied, I have arranged the larger genera into species groups as defined by several current workers (e.g. Barker, Gardner and Peterson). The earlier species groups used by Carter (e.g. Carter 1916) do not work in relation to the newer groups and have not been used herein.