''Lepicerus'' is a genus of
myxophaga
Myxophaga is the second-smallest suborder of the Coleoptera after Archostemata, consisting of roughly 65 species of small to minute beetles in four families. The members of this suborder are aquatic and semiaquatic, and feed on algae.
Descript ...
n beetles containing three described species in the family Lepiceridae; it is the only extant genus in the family, with another genus, ''
Lepiceratus'' only known from fossils.
[Jałoszyński, Paweł; Luo, Xiao-Zhu; Hammel, Jörg U.; Yamamoto, Shûhei & Beutel, Rolf G. (2020). "The mid-Cretaceous †''Lepiceratus'' gen. nov. and the evolution of the relict beetle family Lepiceridae (Insecta: Coleoptera: Myxophaga)". ''Journal of Systematic Palaeontology''. 18 (13). ] Extant species occur in the
Neotropics
The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone.
Definition
In bioge ...
, from Mexico south to Venezuela and Ecuador. Fossils referrable to the genus are known from the early Late Cretaceous of Southeast Asia.
Species
* ''
Lepicerus bufo''
* ''
Lepicerus inaequalis''
* ''
Lepicerus pichilingue''
* †''Lepicerus georissoides'' (Kirejtshuk and Poinar 2006)
Burmese amber
Burmese amber, also known as Burmite or Kachin amber, is amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar. The amber is dated to around 100 million years ago, during the latest Albian to earliest Cenomanian ages of the mid-Cretaceous period. The ...
, Myanmar
Cenomanian.
* †''Lepicerus mumia'' Jałoszyński and Yamamoto 2017 Burmese amber, Myanmar Cenomanian.
* †''Lepicerus pretiosus'' (Kirejtshuk and Poinar 2013)
[A. G. Kirejtshuk and G. Poinar. 2013. On the systematic position of the genera Lepiceroides gen. n. and Haplochelus, with notes on the taxonomy and phylogeny of the Myxophaga (Coleoptera). In D. Azar, M. Engel, E. Jarzembowski, L. Krogmann, A. Nel, J. Santiago-Blay (eds.), ''Insect Evolution in an Ambiferous and Stone Alphabet'' 55-69] Burmese amber, Myanmar Cenomanian
Extinct genera within Lepiceridae
* †''Lepiceratus'' Jałoszyński et al. 2020,
Burmese amber, Myanmar, Cenomanian
References
External links
*
Myxophaga
Myxophaga genera
{{Myxophaga-stub