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Photo#487685
Ground Beetle - Tachys proximus

Ground Beetle - Tachys proximus
Pearl River County, Mississippi, USA
January 29, 2011
Size: 3mm
Found in leaf litter,best match found is Paratachys scitulus.
Id appreciated.

Paratachys proximus
based on running this female specimen through various taxonomic keys available to me. It is now a photo-voucher in the P.W.Messer collection for further study. Thanks Johnny.

One distinguishing character of eastern P. proximus is that the pronotum is distinctly darker than the elytra versus not contrasting with the pale elytra in P. scitulus. Unfortunately, there is no single modern key for the entire southern fauna so I was not able to rule out, for example, P. aeneipennis (Motschulsky, 1862) known only in AL and MS. However, Casey's 1918 key suggests that in the latter species the elytra are dark and without central macule.

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