Accepted by P. Johnson: 14 Jun. 2016; published: 26 Jul. 2016 ZOOTAXA ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) Copyright © 2016 Magnolia Press Zootaxa 4144 (1): 145–150 http://www.mapress.com/j/zt/ Article 145 http://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4144.1.11 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:D5A12B91-7EE7-4A92-89CE-432D150D8C3F Discovery of a new species of the brachyelytrous net-winged beetle genus Alyculus (Coleoptera: Lycidae) from Peninsular Malaysia NAOKI TAKAHASHI 1 , LADISLAV BOCAK 2 & IDRIS ABD. GHANI 3 1 Corresponding author; The Kyushu University Museum, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, 812-8581 Japan. E-mail: taka_naok@yahoo.co.jp 2 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Palacky University, 17. listopadu 50, 771 46 Olomouc, Czech Republic 3 Centre for Insect Systematics, School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia Abstract The net-winged beetle genus Alyculus Kasantsev is reported from Peninsular Malaysia for the first time and a new species, A. malaypeninsularis sp. nov., is described and illustrated. An expanded identification key to Alyculus males is provided and the biology and distribution of the species are discussed. Key words: taxonomy, Lyropaeinae, new record, new species, Oriental Region, West Malaysia, Pahang Introduction The genus Alyculus Kasantsev, 1999 was originally established for a tiny brachypterous lycid, A. kurbatovi Kasantsev, 1999 from West Java, Indonesia. The genus remained monotypic for the next several years. A second congener, A. wittmeri Bocáková, was described from Sumatra, Indonesia and then two additional species were described from Borneo and Sumatra (Bocáková 2006; Palata & Bocak 2012). Alyculus was originally placed in Lyropaeini based on morphological features (Kasantsev 1999) and the monotypical tribe Alyculini was erected in Lyropaeinae when molecular data were analyzed (Bocak & Bocakova 2008). A recent revision showed that the four species of the genus occur on the Sunda Shelf Islands, but no record was available from the Malay Peninsula despite its geographic proximity and intensive field research (Palata & Bocak 2012). The males of Alyculus are the only Oriental net-winged beetles with abbreviated elytra. Other lycid taxa with short winged males are known from eastern Africa (Bocak et al. 2013; Bocak et al. 2014). All these taxa belong to lineages with presumed neotenic development (Bocak et al. 2014). Besides the extremely small body and elytral brachyptery of males, female neoteny is connected with low dispersal ability, limited ranges, and speciation in a limited geographical space. In the course of our surveys conducted in Peninsular Malaysia, a fifth congener was discovered and now fills- in the distributional gap mentioned above. We describe this new species below. Material and methods Voucher specimens used in this study were either dried, or fixed with, and stored in 99.5% ethanol. The terminal part of the abdomen was removed after softening the whole specimen in water and placed in 10% potassium hydroxide overnight at room temperature. The dissected body parts were then washed with distilled water, dehydrated through a graded ethanol series, and transferred into pure glycerol for dissection and examination of terminalia under a binocular stereoscopic microscope. Body structures were measured following Palata & Bocak (2012). Abbreviations for depositories of the materials employed herein are as follows: ELKU (Entomological