Re-classification of Rhipidiomorphus malaccanus Pic, a long-neglected genus and species of Psephenoidinae (Coleoptera: Psephenidae)

In his long career, Maurice Pic (1866–1957), a prolific French entomologist, described many thousands of insect species, subspecies, and varieties, as well as several hundreds, if not more than a thousand, of new genera across orders and families (Villiers 1958a, b). The majority of Pic’s described taxa are beetles, especially in Tenebrionoidea and the former Malacodermata (or Malacodermatidae). Many genera were described in a brief and uninformative style and without explicit family assignment, making it difficult to determine their familial affiliation based on the literature (Pollock 2005). Accordingly, several taxa have remained little known or long-neglected until now. Most of Pic’s type material is deposited in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN), where it is possible to examine and provide a possibility to reliably determine their identities. Rhipidiomorphus Pic is just one such case. Original descriptions of the genus and its type species, R. malaccanus Pic, were placed among those of drilid and drilid-like genera and species in Pic (1918). These beetles are currently recognized as either belonging to the Drilidae (or Drilinae of Elateridae), Phengodidae, Rhagophthalmidae, and Lampyridae (Wittmer 1963, Crowson 1972, Kundrata and Bocak 2011 a, b). Pic (1918) stated that Rhipidiomorphus was allied to Pterydrias Reitter by sharing dehiscent elytra. The latter, another enigmatic taxon, however, provided little clue for inferring the systematic position of Rhipidiomorphus. Pterydrias has long been considered as belonging to Drilidae or Karumiinae, but was more recently verified to be a genus of Ripiphoridae (Batelka and Hájek 2010). In the1918 Zoological Record Rhipidiomorphus was listed in Malacodermatidae, which were commonly used to denote the “softskinned” beetle groups at that time. No subsequent author has reviewed or even mentioned this genus and species except Wittmer (1944) who explicitly placed them in Drilidae. Rhipidiomorphus has been ignored since that time. Lately we rediscovered the type specimen of R. malaccanus in the general collection of the MNHN. The holotype was in the corner of a box containing many former drilid taxa described by Pic (1918) and the box was labeled Cantharidae/ Drilinae on its exterior. This may reveal Pic’s intention toward placing Rhipidiomorphus in Drilidae or Malacodermatidae. In reality, R. malaccanus is neither a drilid nor a malacodermatid but instead it is a psephenid. Herein we report this rediscovery and new identification.