Tropical Coppery Fungus Weevil

Cuticle and pubescence with unusually variable colors and patterns; cuticle from pale honey-brown (? teneral) to reddish brown to dark brown, sometimes with the anterior 1/4 and/or the declivity redder or paler, appendages paler than body, femora darker than tibiae; dorsal pubescence usually silvery gray with a vague, irregular brown antemedian discal spot on each elytron, rarely entirely gray or brown spot more extensive. ( 3 ) Det. M. A. Quinn, 2017 Holotype: male, Texas, Cameron Co., Audubon Sabal Palm Grove 25-vii-1993 B. & B. Valentine colls. The type was taken beating recently dead fronds of Sabal texana (Cook) Becc., still hanging on the trees. ( 3 ) Remarks: The type series was swarming on the undersides of recently dead palm fronds still hanging on the trees. My wife and I counted 75 specimens on one frond, and with continued collecting we could have taken thousands. At the time, the Sabal Sanctuary was very dry; we found only 19 other beetles of 12 species. It is hard to believe that anthribids outnumbered all other Coleoptera 15:1. ( 3 ) Since the Brownsville area has been carefully collected by experts for 100 or more years, with no specimens of Neoxenus spp. in any of the many collections studied, I suspect this species had just arrived from Mexico, or farther south, and was exploding in a new habitat when we arrived in July. Subsequent collecting in October of the same year by Shawn Clark and Bob Androw and September, 1996, by Shawn Clark, has yielded only a few specimens. ( 3 )