The Cupedidae of the World

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of papers dealing with the family Cupedidae, but in spite of the revised interest in this group there is still no publication which treats the family on a world-wide basis and provides keys for separating all the genera and species. According to Janssens (1953), the family contains 22 species belonging to five genera. Recently, Neboiss (1959) added three new species from Australia and erected a new South American genus, while Papp (1961) described a new species from California. In this paper I will bring the available information on the Cupedidae together and present a list of fossil forms, a series of keys to the genera and species, and an account of their geographical distribution. In addition, I propose three new synonyms in the genus Cupes.