Species inventory of elaterids (Coleoptera: Elateridae) from a Mexican tropical dry forest

A species inventory of Elateridae (Insecta: Coleoptera: Elateroidea) from the Estacion de Biologia Chamela, Jalisco, Mexico, is presented. The identification was made based on morphological and molecular evidence (mtDNA gene cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI)).. Fieldwork was carried out between 2009 and 2012. We obtained 544 individuals belonging to 46 species, 25 genera, 7 subfamilies and 11 tribes, and 106 sequences of several discriminated morphospecies were obtained. Thirty eight species were discriminated with molecular information, finding 10 cases of discordance between molecular and morphological evidence. The subfamily Elaterinae had the highest species richness (18 spp.), followed by Agrypninae (16 spp.) and Cardiophorinae (6 spp.). The subfamilies with lowest number of species were Cebrioninae (2 spp.), Lissominae (2 spp.), Semiotinae (1 sp.) and Thylacosterninae (1 sp.). The genera with the highest number of species were Conoderus (6 spp.), Megaphenthes (5 spp.) and Esthesopus (4 spp. each). Twenty-seven of the species collected represent new records for Jalisco, 5 for Mexico, and 7 more are potentially new to science. This study highlights the importance of employing different character sources to have a better knowledge about the species richness in faunistic studies, especially in groups with high number of species. All Rights Reserved (C) 2016 Universidad Nacional Autenoma de Mexico, Institute de Biologia. This is an open access item distributed under the Creative Commons CC License BY-NC-ND 4.0.