Clavicornaltica Scherer, 1974

Damaška, Albert F. & Aston, Paul, 2019, Leaf litter and moss-inhabiting flea beetles of Hong Kong (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Alticini), Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae (Acta. Ent. Mus. Natl. Pragae) 59 (1), pp. 151-161 : 154

Clavicornaltica Scherer, 1974

The genus Clavicornaltica is represented by very small (0.6–1.5 mm long), round and strongly convex beetles of brown to nearly black color. The genus is simply distinguishable from all other Oriental flea beetle genera by the presence of clavate antennae, which are unique among Alticini – the only other genus with clavate antennae and rounded, tiny body shape known to date is Kiskeya Konstantinov & Chamorro-Lacayo, 2006 . This genus is distributed in the Carribean and is not likely related to Clavicornaltica (KONSTANTINOV & CHAMORRO- LACAYO 2006). The identification of Clavicornaltica species is, however, extremely difficult. First described species ( SCHERER 1974) were documented without the description of genitalia, because the dissection of genitalia is very complicated. Clavicornaltica species are generally uniform externally, however vary in small details of their bodies which led to a erroneously wide concept of every species and multiple forms (‘formA’,‘form B’, etc.) were described to demonstrate small morphological nuances, which were understood as intraspecific variability ( MEDVEDEV 1996). However, recent studies ( KONSTANTINOV & DUCKETT 2005, SUENAGA & YOSHIDA 2016) revealed that Clavicornaltica species are externally similar, but can be distinguished by examination of their genitalia. The former broad concept of Clavicornaltica species was therefore abandoned and new species are diagnosed primarily by characters on both male and female genitalia. However, this study shows that also careful searching for external characters is necessary in Clavicornaltica studies, because in one collecting event, multiple externally uniform species can be found.