Cydistus Bourgeois, 1885 [Phengodidae: Cydistinae]

Cydistus Bourgeois, 1885: 272. Type species. Cydistus reitteri Bourgeois, 1885; by monotypy.

Composition and distribution.

Six described species from Asia Minor, the Levant, Iraq, and Iran: Cydistus chindaaricus Bolívar y Pieltain, 1913, C. escalerai Bolívar y Pieltain, 1913, C. nigripennis Wittmer, 1979, C. persicus Bolívar y Pieltain, 1913, C. reitteri Bourgeois, 1885, and C. zurcheri Bourgeois, 1908 (Kundrata et al. 2019).

Remarks.

Cydistus was originally placed in Drilidae (Olivier 1910; Wittmer 1944). Later, Crowson (1955) hypothesized Cydistus might be an intermediate form between Karumiidae (currently a subfamily in Dascillidae) and Phengodidae . Although Paulus (1972) erected Cydistinae within Karumiidae for Cydistus, Crowson (1972) transferred this genus into the widely delimited Phengodidae, which also included Rhagophthalmidae . Lawrence and Newton (1995) and Bocak (2007) classified Cydistus in Phengodidae: Rhagophthalminae . Lawrence et al. (2010a, b) and Lawrence (2016) considered Cydistinae in Elateriformia incertae sedis. Finally, Kundrata et al. (2019) were the first to include Cydistinae in a molecular phylogenetic analysis, and found them sister to the New World Phengodidae, which are only distantly related to Rhagophthalmidae . This placement was confirmed by a morphology-based analysis by Roza (2022).