Eucurtia

There is a single species in this myrmecophilous genus of Histeridae. Eucurtia comata is alone in the genus Eucurtia. It is a highly distinctive species, with greatly exaggerated trichome setae. The species is unusual among Chlamydopsinae in living with termites rather than ants. Mjöberg (1912) described interactions of the beetle and its host, including the termites imbibing some sort of fluid from the apices of the elongated trichomes. No specimens other than Blackburn's original type and the specimen observed by Mjöberg have ever been found.

Analyses by Caterino & Dégallier (2007) placed Eucurtia as the sister to a clade comprising Chlamydopsis and Ectatommiphila. However, they cautioned that too many character states of Eucurtia remain to be resolved to have high confidence in this result. In particular, no males of Eucurtia are known, and some potentially informative genitalia characters have not been examined.

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List of Eucurtia and their Host

Genus and species	Author and Year	Host	Distribution	Notes
Eucurtia comata	(Blackburn, 1901)	termites; Eutermes	Australia: NSWS.

REFERENCES

• Blackburn, T. (1901). Further notes on Australian Coleoptera, with descriptions of new genera and species. Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia 25(II), 99–131.

• Caterino, M.S. and N. Degallier. 2007. A review of the biology and taxonomy of Chlamydopsinae (Coleoptera: Histeridae). Invertebrate Systematics 21: 1-28.

• Mjöberg, E. 1912. On a new termitophilous genus of the family Histeridae. Entomologisk Tidskrift 33:121–124.