Fossil Melandryidae (Coleoptera: Tenebrionoidea) from Eocene Baltic amber of the Sambian peninsula: new genus, six new species, new records and key to described taxa Author Alekseev, Vitalii Igorevich 0000-0003-4390-5443 Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nahimovskiy prospekt 36, 117997 Moscow, Russia. alekseew 0802 @ yahoo. com; https: // orcid. org / 0000 - 0003 - 4390 - 5443 & Kaliningrad Regional Amber Museum, Marshal Vasilevskii square 1, Kaliningrad 236016, Russia alekseew0802@yahoo.com Author Bukejs, Andris 0000-0001-7165-3023 Institute of Life Sciences and Technologies, Daugavpils University, Vienîbas 13, Daugavpils LV- 5401, Latvia. carabidae @ inbox. lv; https: // orcid. org / 0000 - 0001 - 7165 - 3023 carabidae@inbox.lv text Zootaxa 2021 2021-04-27 4965 1 142 166 journal article 7045 10.11646/zootaxa.4965.1.7 0d69081f-0cf4-4be6-92a6-5a785e5ee98e 1175-5326 4723237 1F5BE28F-C8B5-47FF-8A3F-68B5BC40BD6F Genus Symphora LeConte, 1866 Note. The amber specimens under study possess morphological characters of two externally similar genera placed as incertae sedis within the subfamily Melandryinae : Symphora LeConte, 1866 and Microtonus LeConte, 1862 , both absent in Europe and distributed in the New World and eastern Asia ( Nikitsky & Pollock 2008 , 2010 ). The set of these characters is: procoxae contiguous, pretarsal claws simple, head visible from above, frontoclypeal suture deeply impressed, antennae 11-segmented and filiform, antennal insertions concealed from above, pronotum without triangular basal impressions, protrochantin invisible, lateral sides of pronotum not margined, elytra narrowly ovate, elytral punctuation irregular, and penultimate tarsomere of all legs bilobed. Several morphological features observed in fossil specimens (e.g. eyes slightly emarginated, pronotal posterior angles not acute, pronotal lateral sides very shorty margined posteriorly, and the widest at base pronotum) allow us to assign these beetles to Symphora . This genus includes ten extant Neotropical species ( LeConte 1866 ; Champion 1888, 1916; Nikitsky & Pollock 2008 ; Pollock 2015 ), known from Brazil [ Symphora infuscata Champion, 1916 ; S. longicornis Champion, 1916 ], Panama [ S. apicalis Champion, 1889 ], Guatemala [ S. maculata Champion, 1889 ; S. tropicalis Champion, 1889 ; S. ruficeps Champion, 1889 ; S. convexa Champion, 1889 ; S. elongata Champion, 1889 ], and Mexico [ S. impressicollis Champion, 1889 ; S. lanceolata Champion, 1916 ]; and four extant Holarctic species, two of them occurring in eastern North America [ S. flavicollis (Haldeman, 1848) and S. rugosa (Haldeman, 1848) ] and two distributed in eastern Asia (Russian Far East, Japan ) [ S. atra Nomura, 1959 and S. brunnea (Marseul, 1876) = S. miyakei Nomura & Hayashi, 1960 ].