A Taxonomic Study On The Genus Tachinus Of China (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Tachyporinae)

Staphylinidae is one of the largest family in Coleoptera, they occupy a wide variety of habitats and have a wide range of food-habits. They are essentially carnivorous (insect feeder), but some groups have become evolved as mycophagous, coprophagous, coprophagous, carpophagous, pollinophagous and so on. Some species have adapted to a parasitism of mammals. Their prosperity is inevitably causing direct interaction between them and mankind.Tachinus is one of the largest genera of the subfamily Tachyporinae in the family Staphylinidae. It was established by Gravenhorst in 1802. Latreille (1810) designated Staphylinus rufipes Linne as the type species for the genus. Up to the present 239 species of the genus have been known from the world. They are mainly distributed in the Palaearctic, Nearctic, Oriental, Ethiopian Region. There are 56 species known in China, of which 47 in the Mainland (including 1 fossil species), 7 in Taiwan and 2 in both Mainland and Taiwan.In China, however, taxonomic study on this genus is relatively behind and only some of scholars separately studied on this field. Up to the present, systematic works concerning Chinese Tachinus has not been made, 70 percent of the Chinese known species were described by foreign scholars and the type specimens were deposited in foreign countries. For these reasons, it became difficulty for us to study Chinese Tachinus fauna.This study was based on the examinations of over 1,480 specimens, which were collected from a lot of places in China such as Xinjiang, Jilin, Shanxi, Sichuan, Hubei, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Guizhou and so on. The results of my research is summarized as follows:1. This paper was the first systematic study of the genus Tachinus of China.2. In the present paper, 43 Chinese species of the genus were recognized, of which 12 species and 1 subspecies were described as new to science, and 6 were new to China. The male of T. gigantulus and female of T. licenti were found and described for the first time (3 new species and 3 new record have already been published).3. All the species were described in detail, and their sexual characters were illustrated. The color photos for every species were also provided. The history review, collecting techniques, and major diagnostic characters of the genus were discussed.4. The keys to the subgenera and the species of the genus were presented.5. A catalog of the genus Tachinus of world was given.6. A database of all the known species of the genus Tachinus in the world was built.