The fossil record contains vital information about the evolution of lineages and is a source of data that cannot be reconciled other than by the direct observation of morphologies. Total‐evidence phylogenetic reconstruction is being increasingly used to assess the position of extinct taxa by incorporating morphological data from extinct and extant taxa together with molecular data from extant taxa in a united framework. Here we apply the method to two Cretaceous Burmese amber inclusions belonging to the rove beetle subfamily Paederinae. To perform the total evidence analysis, we constructed the first morphological matrix and the most comprehensive molecular dataset for the subfamily. Our analysis reveals an extinct lineage of Paederinae rove beetles with a suite of unique morphological characters, resulting in the description of a new genus: Diminudon gen. nov. and two new species: D. schomannae sp. nov. and D. kachinensis sp. nov. Simultaneously our analyses provide new insights into the evolution and classification of the entire subfamily. We also discuss the unusually small size of the newly described Paederinae, which may represent an additional case for miniaturization in the Cretaceous.

Abstract. A survey of Lord Howe Island Coleoptera was conducted by a team from the Australian Museum and the Natural History Museum of Denmark (University of Copenhagen), in February 2017. The primary purpose of the survey was to assess the status of larger species, with the assumption that these are more vulnerable to predation by the introduced rodent Rattus rattus. Critical size was arbitrarily designated 1 cm or more in length. The 32 large species collected are listed here with comments on both their status on the islands and their taxonomy. Nine of these species are newly recorded from the island. The small number of large beetle species collected by a second Australian Museum group working on Balls Pyramid, 22 km from the main island, is also included here. The cerambycid Oricopis insulana (Olliff, 1889) is recorded for the first time since its original collection in the early 1880s.

A positive correlation between the species richness and morphological diversity of some organisms has been found in almost all studies at the local community scale. However, this documented relationship has not always been consistent because of diverse niches and the status of an organism in an ecosystem. Global taxon sampling, new morphological approaches, and consideration of more taxonomic categories other than species level are possible methods to further investigate this contradiction. In this study, we proposed a new paradigm for higher taxa biodiversity analysis based on a cosmopolitan dataset. A total of 1106 species from around the world representing all subfamilies and 33% genera of Buprestidae (jewel beetles) were selected to test the correlation between morphological diversity (MD) and genus/species richness (GR/SR) among subfamilies. The MD was quantified by the contours of the pronotum and elytron in dorsal view based on a geometric morphometric approach. The positive correlation between MD and GR was found in all test combinations, but was irrelevant in the species-level test. Interestingly, the correlation between MD and GR was higher than MD and SR in both pronotum and elytron measurements. Additionally, the MD of the pronotum is obviously higher than the MD of the elytron. Our results demonstrate that the geometric morphometric approach could quite accurately reveal diversity patterns of the family Buprestidae. Future studies on different groups, using more characters, more analyses and detailed biological interpretations, are required to fully understand the relationship between MD and SR.