A revision of prespelea park (Staphylinidae, pselaphinae)

Abstract

We revise the genus Prespelea Park, redefining and redescribing the two previously known species, P. cope-landi Park and P. quirsfeldi Park, and adding ten new species: P. parki Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. minima Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. morsei Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. divergens Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. carltoni Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. myersae Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. georgiensis Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. enigma Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., P. wagneri Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n., and P. basalis Caterino & Vásquez-Vélez, sp. n.. The genus is still only known from a relatively small area in the southern Appalachian Mountains, but the diversity is much greater than previously suspected. The new species exhibit considerable diversity in male secondary sexual characters. A preliminary phylogenetic analysis cannot conclusively resolve the polarity of eye and wing reduction across Speleobamini, but the monophyly of Park’s subgenus Fusjugama, if expanded to include all species with full-eyed and winged males, is not supported, and we therefore synonymize it with Prespelea s. str.