Thaneroclerines are a widely distributed family of beetles conprising approximately 30 described species. All members of this family with known feeding habits are predaceous, and most of these are known to feed on small wood boring or mycetophagous beetles. The taxon differs from Cleridae, sensu stricto, by the presence of a deep basal notch or cavity on the mandibles. The status of this group is not wholly agreed upon - while many authors now consider them a distinct family more closely related to Trogossitidae than to Cleridae, others retain the more classical view and treat them as either one or two subfamilies of Cleridae. The most recent phylogenetic analysis (Gunter et al. 2013) suggests thaneroclerinae as nested within the Cleridae.

List of thaneroclerid genera, taxa marked with asterisks occur in the Nearctic ecozone:

* Zenodosus Wolcott, 1910

* Thaneroclerus Lefebvre, 1838

Meprinogenus Kolibáč, 1992

Viticlerus Miyatake, 1977 

Neoclerus Lewis, 1892

Isoclerus Lewis, 1892

* Ababa Casey, 1897 included as a subgenus of Isoclerus (See Kolibac 1992)

Compactoclerus Pic, 1939

Onerunka Kolibáč, 2012

 

Incertae sedis:

Cyrtinoclerus Chapin, 1924 (possibly belongs in Tenebrionoidea, see Kolibac 1992)

Cleridopsis Champion, 1913 (in his original description, Champion suggests this taxon as "perhaps best placed in Cryptophagidae or Cucujidae")

 

 

Literature Cited 

 

Bouchard P. et al. 2011. Family-group names in Coleoptera (Insecta). ZooKeys 88: 1–972.

 

Champion, G. C. 1913.  pp 95-96 in Notes on various Central American Coleoptera, with descriptions of new genera and species.  Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London 61: 58-169.

 

Kolibáč J. (1992) Revision of Thanerocleridae n. stat. (Coleoptera: Cleroidea). Mitteilungen der Schweizerischen Entomologischen Gesellschaft 65: 303-340.

 

Opitz W. 2010. Classification, natural history, phylogeny, and subfamily composition of the Cleridae and generic content of the subfamilies. Entomologica Basiliensia et Collections Frey 32: 31–128.

 

Gunter, N. L., Leavengood, J. M., Bartlett, J. S., Chapman, E. G., and Cameron, S. L. 2013. A molecular phylogeny of the checkered beetles and a description of Epiclininae a new subfamily (Coleoptera: Cleroidea: Cleridae). Systematic Entomology 38: 626-636.