Tachyporus nitidulus ( Fabricius , 1781 ) ( Coleoptera , Staphylinidae , Tachyporinae ) : first record from the state of Florida , USA

The range of the staphylinid beetle Tachyporus nitidulus (Fabricius, 1781) (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Tachyporinae) is extended to include the state of Florida, USA. The record is based on a single female specimen collected via Malaise trap in a rural yard in Baker County, Florida in 2007.


Introduction
The genus Tachyporus (Staphylinidae: Tachyporinae) was erected by Gravenhorst in 1802.Campbell (1979) subsequently revised the Tachyporus of North and Central America, including comprehensive distribution summaries.One of the widest distributed species, Tachyporus nitidulus (Fabricius, 1781), was recorded in much of the United States and Canada, with a single specimen tentatively recorded from Mexico.
Originally described from Sweden, T. nitidulus is native throughout the Palearctic.This predatory species is considered adventive to the Nearctic (Majka and Klimaszewski 2008), where it was first recorded from Indiana, USA by Say (1834).Despite its now extensive distribution, T. nitidulus has never been recorded from the state of Florida, USA (Campbell 1979;Peck and Thomas 1998).Here, we present the first record of the species in the state of Florida based on a single adult female from Glen Saint Mary, Baker County, Florida, USA.

Identification.
Identification was performed according to Campbell (1979) and confirmed by Dr J.Howard Frank

NOTES ON GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION
of the University of Florida Department of Entomology and Nematology.Tachyporus nitidulus is identified by the following set of characters: length 1.1-1.4mm from apex of head to apex of elytra; color light yellowish to dark reddish-brown, darker in some specimens; head in some specimens darker than pronotum and elytra; 7th abdominal tergite with apical fringe of pubescence; pubescence of elytra and abdomen fine and dense; and pronotum glabrous and glossy and wider than elytra (Fig. 2).
The species can be readily distinguished from its only southeastern USA sympatric congener T. jocosus (Say, 1834) by its maxillary palps (Fig. 3).The apical segment of the maxillary palps of T. nitidulus is triangular and no longer than the width of the preceding segment, versus the apical segment of maxillary palps being subulate and distinctly longer than the width of the penultimate segment in T. jocosus.

Discussion
This is the first record of T. nitidulus from the state of Florida, USA.The new record is approximately 500 km from the nearest previous record (Fig. 1) (Campbell 1979).The typical habitat of T. nitidulus is moist areas like leaf litter or decaying wood (Campbell 1979), and the presence of the specimen reported here in a rural yard is congruent with 1 previous study noting the species in suburban lawns in Kentucky, USA (Cockfield and Potter 1984).Given that the species has been recorded from Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, and now Florida, it is likely also present in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia.With future sampling efforts, T. nitidulus is expected to be found in these 3 states from which it has also not yet been recorded (Campbell 1979).The present record provides additional evidence of the success of this widely distributed adventive species.