Present taxonomic work on Staphylinidae (Coleoptera) in Canada: progress against all odds

The Staphylinidae or rove beetles represent one of the largest evolutionary radiations on earth with more than 56,000 species (Grebennikov and Newton 2009, Ślipiński et al. 2011) and are a dominant element of the insect fauna in many terrestrial ecosystems (examples discussed in Thayer 2005). Even though such an enormous diversity may seem unmanageable, we are living in an exciting time for taxonomic research on rove beetles. There has been a relatively sudden expansion in the field of bioinformatics, including e-taxonomy (see ZooKeys special issue 150 for further information). A world catalogue of Staphylinidae (minus Aleocharinae, Paederinae, and Pselaphinae) was recently published (Herman 2001) and followed by catalogues of the entire family for the Palaearctic (Löbl and Smetana 2004), and for the south temperate fauna (Newton and Thayer 2005). American Beetles Volume 1 (Newton et al. 2001) provided the first complete and modern keys to the genera of Staphylinidae occurring in North America north of Mexico, and Navarrete-Heredia et al. (2002) provided the same for Mexico. ‘The Beetles of Central Europe – Staphylinidae I’ by Assing and Schülke (2012) is the most complete species-level review and key for a regional staphylinid fauna to date, and represents a benchmark for other regions of the world to aspire to. In the last quarter of the 20th century, Canada was a world leader in rove beetle systematics, providing two positions for full-time research (A. Smetana and J.M. Campbell) and one for technical support (A. Davies), in Biosystematics Research CenZooKeys 186: 1–5 (2012)