A new species and a new combination for the subfamily Cunaxinae (Acari: Cunaxidae)

A new species of Cunaxidae, namely Cunaxa bagualensis Wurlitzer & Ferla sp. nov., is described and illustrated based on females and males collected in soil and leaf litter in the Atlantic rainforest biome in a rural forest fragment in Mormaço county, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. Additionally, Armascirus livingstoni Laniecka & Kazmierski, 2021 is transferred to Dactyloscirus based on some observations.

Haplocauda, a New Genus of Fireflies Endemic to the Amazon Rainforest (Coleoptera: Lampyridae)

Most firefly genera have poorly defined taxonomic boundaries, especially in the Neotropics, where they are more diverse and more difficult to identify. Recent advances that shed light on the diversity of fireflies in South America have focused mainly on Atlantic Rainforest taxa, whereas lampyrids in other biomes remained largely unstudied. We found three new firefly species endemic to the Amazon basin that share unique traits of the male abdomen where sternum VIII and the pygidium are modified and likely work as a copulation clamp. Here we test and confirm the hypothesis that these three species form a monophyletic lineage and propose Haplocauda gen. nov. to accommodate the three new species. Both maximum parsimony and probabilistic (Bayesian and maximum likelihood) phylogenetic analyses confirmed Haplocauda gen. nov. monophyly, and consistently recovered it as the sister group to Scissicauda, fireflies endemic to the Atlantic Rainforest that also feature a copulation clamp on abdominal segment VIII, although with a different configuration. We provide illustrations, diagnostic descriptions, and keys to species based on males and females. The three new species were sampled from different regions, and are likely allopatric, a common pattern among Amazonian taxa.