Click here to try out a matrix-based Lucid key to genera of Agyrtodini, adapted from this paper. About Lucid: you'll need to have Java running in order to view the key properly. Click on the little key icon () to begin. This is a matrix-based key, so all you have to do is find character states you can diagnose and knock them out one by one. Click on the tiny landscape icon () next to any character or taxon name to see a photograph or illustration. If you get lost or want to identify a different beetle, click the "recycle" icon () to start over.

Camiarines and where to find them
Click here for a photo gallery of camiarine leiodid habitat, field techniques, and portraits of selected genera. Fieldwork for this project has taken me to Australia, New Zealand, and Chile (pictured here); within the next two years I hope to visit South Africa to collect the last few taxa needed for my dissertation.

Leiodid systematics

My dissertation research focuses on molecular systematics and morphological evolution in the staphylinoid beetle family Leiodidae. Although leiodids are usually thought of as tiny, impossible-to-distinguish Little Brown Beetles, there in fact exists a surprising array of morphological diversity within the family-- everything from faux ant-mimics to troglobites to louse-like beaver ectoparasites.

The particular taxonomic emphasis of my research is the plesiomorphic subfamily Camiarinae and its largest tribe (Agyrtodini), both of which are poorly-understood groups found only in temperate forests of the southern hemisphere. Unlike your "typical" leiodid (say, Agathidium or Aglyptinus), camiarines are huge, hulking, and hairy-- the leiodid edition of a Neandertal. Given their dazzling paucity of derived characteristics, it's likely that the camiarines are a paraphyletic group containing the family's most basal lineage. I am collecting both morphological and molecular data in order to untangle the phylogenetic relationships of this unusual assemblage.

pictured at right: leiodid food! T-B, slime mold fruiting bodies in New Zealand; a putative myxomycete in Australia; puffballs in Chile