Hydrophilids to begin

I'm now starting as a Ph.D. student at Kansas University at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I will be working on aquatic beetles systematics, using morphological and molecular data, at the Short Lab.

To be honest, this is my first time working on a group different to broad-nosed weevils, so my knowledge about hydrophilids was very limited until a couple of weeks ago. Two of the things that I know now in general terms of taxonomy are:

- The most influential work on hydrophilids is "The Hydrophiloid Beetles" by Michael Hansen, published in 1991. There he provided, even for genera, diagnoses, descriptions and keys, along with drawings and a phylogenetic analysis. The classification proposed in this publication has been longly used, but a recent molecular analysis published by Andrew Short and Martin Fikáček in 2013, revealed a different configuration ath the subfamily level.

- Not all the so called scavenger water beetles are actually aquatic: of course there are many aquatic species, but there is also a large terrestrial group, and there are also species that occupy intermediate habitats. If you absolutely need to draw a line (and it would not be a straight one... probably would also be diluted), it could be possible to say that the subfamily Sphaeridiinae is mostly composed by terrestrial species and the remaining subfamilies (Hydrophilinae, Chaetarthriinae, Acidocerinae, Rygmodinae and Enochrinae) are represented majorly by aquatic species. These are the subfamilies established on Short & Fikáček's paper.

One of the objectives of my project will be to take a closer look at the morphological characters that grant scavenger water beetles the ability to dive under water, and to see how those characters vary given the different niches that the beetles occupy. In order to tackle this goal, I need to familiarize first with the particular morphology of the group. Fortunately I already have experience with beetle morphology!.

My first aim is to review the genus Helobata (Bergroth, 1888), which has an odd appearance for a hydrophilid... soon I will tell you more about it!


References

• Hansen, M. (1991). The hydrophiloid beetles. Phylogeny, classification and a revision of the genera (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae). Biologiske Skrifter, 40, 1–367.
• Short, A. E. Z., & Fikáček, M. (2013). Molecular phylogeny, evolution and classification of the Hydrophilidae (Coleoptera). Systematic Entomology, 38(4), 723-752.