Waiputrechus [SEP] parent taxon
Waiputrechus
Waiputrechus is a genus of beetles in the family Carabidae, containing a single species endemic to New Zealand. Waiputrechus cavernicola is known only from a single specimen collected in 1999 by Maree Hunt from a rocky wall inside a cave, Mert's Muddle, near Waipu. It has been classified as "nationally critical" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.
Description.
"Waiputrechus cavernicola" is very small, the holotype specimen being 3.1 mm in length. It is a pale yellowish brown.
External
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of