Family PYGIDICRANIDAE
Compiler and date details
Gerasimos Cassis, Australian Museum, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Introduction
The Pygidicranidae are found mainly in the Southern Hemisphere. Steinmann (1986) revised the world fauna based on the influential works of Hincks (1955, 1959). More recently, Steinmann (1989) recognised 11 subfamilies, one of which, the Ethiopian Diplatyinae, is accorded family status by others workers (Sakai 1982).
The family is poorly represented in Australia. Only four subfamilies, two endemic genera, Austroblandex Brindle and Brindlensia Srivastava, and several species in the broadly distributed genera, Echinosoma Serville, Cranopygia Burr and Dacnodes Burr, have been recorded.
Pygidicranids have been consistently separated from the rest of the earwigs on the basis of having what has been referred to as the blattoid neck, with anterior and posterior ventral sclerites of equal size, the latter usually free of the prosternum. Males are also characterised by a pair of median genital lobes.
References
Hincks, W.D. 1955. New species of Pygidicraninae Earwigs (Dermaptera: Pygidicranidae). Annals and Magazine of Natural History 12 8: 806–827
Hincks, W.D. 1959. A Systematic Monograph of the Dermaptera of the World based on material in the British Museum (Natural History). Part II. Pygidicranidae excluding Diplatyinae. London : British Museum (Natural History) pp. x 218
Sakai, S. 1982. A new proposed classification of the Dermaptera with special reference to the check-list of the Dermaptera of the World. Bulletin of Daito Bunka University. Tokyo 20: 1–108
Steinmann, H. 1986. Dermaptera, Part I: Catadermaptera (I): Pygidicranidae. Das Tierreich. Eine Zusammenstellung und Kennzeichnung der rezenten, Berlin. 102: xiv 1–336
Steinmann, H. 1989. World Catalogue of Dermaptera. Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Publishers pp. 934