Endogean and cavernicolous Coleoptera of the Balkans. XVII. A new species of the genus Speluncarius Reitter, 1886 (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Harpalinae, Pterostichini) from Croatia

The genus Speluncarius Reitter, 1886 (Harpalinae, Pterostichini) is made up by anophthalmous or almost blind species. The genus is related to Tapinopterus Schaum, 1858, which contains numerous species from the Balkan-Anatolian region and have more or less developed eyes. Speluncarius is distributed in the Western Palaearctic region; 26 species and one subspecies are known from Italy, the Balkan Peninsula and Turkey. The genus is classified in five subgenera, Elasmopterus Kraatz, 1886 (6 spp.); Hypogearius Jeannel, 1953 (3 spp.); Hypogium Tschitscherine, 1900 (1 sp.); Pontotapinus Gueorguiev & Lohaj, 2008 (1 sp.) and Speluncarius (s.str.) Reitter, 1886 (15 spp.) (Sciaky, 1982; Bousquet, 2003; Gueorguiev & Lohaj, 2008; Casale et al., 2013). The diversity of the genus is highest in Greece (11 spp.) and Turkey (8 spp.), 3 species are known from Italy and 3 species have been described from Dinarides mountain range in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro and Albania and one species from an unknown type locality in Albania. The aim of this paper is to describe a fourth Dinaric and the first Croatian species of Speluncarius, which is assigned to the nominotypical subgenus. The new species was discovered during a joint biospeleological expeditions in 2014 to the Biokovo Mountains in central Dalmatia.