Notes on the systematic placement of Sciacharis (Anthicimimus) (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Scydmaeninae).

The entangled history of Sciacharis Broun, 1983, a genus in which nearly 240 species were placed by Herbert Franz who has apparently never studied its type species, was recently summarized by Jałoszyński (2014a, b). A synonymy of Chatchamaenus Franz with Sciacharis s. str. was demonstrated, and Maorinus Franz, 1980 was placed as a subgenus of Sciacharis (Jałoszyński 2014a). Still, the systematics of Sciacharis, a genus currently comprising nearly 300 species and distributed in the Southern Hemisphere, is far from clarity. The smallest subgenus of Sciacharis is Anthicimimus Franz, 1993. It includes only one peculiar species from Chile, Sciacharis anthiciformis (Franz, 1967). This species was originally described as Euconnus anthiciformis Franz, 1967, and later transferred to a newly established subgenus of Sciacharis (Franz 1993). The diagnosis of Anthicimimus was based on a strongly elongate and slender body, strongly convex and round head with small eyes, pronotum strongly narrowing posteriorly with two antebasal pits connected by a transverse groove and very long and slender legs (Franz 1993). All these characters have very little taxonomic value, as they are variable within many genera and subgenera of Cyrtoscydmini. Important ventral characters, broadly used to define genera or subgenera, were not even mentioned by Franz, and the reason for transferring this particular species from Euconnus Thomson, 1859 to Sciacharis was not explained. Sciacharis anthiciformis is known from a holotype female only. This unique specimen is here studied in detail and its morphological structures are compared with those of Sciacharis s. str., to verify the taxonomic placement of Anthicimimus.