Assistant Professor Purdue University Lafayette, Indiana
Many groups of Nearctic Tenebrionoidea lack recent treatments and possess very complicated nomenclatural histories. As part of a community-wide effort to update beetle identification resources for the United States and Canada, I have started learning more about the relatives of darkling beetles in various forays into the taxonomy of groups requiring updated identification keys. This talk summarizes the fun (and sometimes frustrating) journey of trying to clear up taxonomic and nomenclatural problems in the families Scraptiidae and Salpingidae with some additional notes on Melandryidae and related taxa.