A review of Appalachian Dasycerus Brongniart, and the recognition of cryptic diversity within Dasycerus carolinensis Horn (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Dasycerinae)

­Previous analyses have revealed deep divergences among populations of the relictual and enigmatic rove beetle, Dasycerus carolinensis Horn. New data from additional populations, molecular markers, and morphology unambiguously reveal this 'species' to represent a complex of closely related species, distinguishable by characters of the male genitalia, and corresponding closely to geographically coherent clades discovered by molecular analyses. Calibrated dating analyses show Appalachian Dasycerus to have been diverging in the region for more than 10 million years, yet largely respecting important biogeographic barriers in the region, such as the French Broad and Little Tennessee River drainages. In addition to discussing finer scale biogeographic patterns in the group, we formally recognize 9 new species from within what was formerly known as D. carolinensis: D. virginiensis sp. nov., D. tuckasegee sp. nov., D. pacolet sp. nov., D. chattooga sp. nov., D. itseyi sp. nov., D. unicoi sp. no..., The data set comprises sequences from two regions of the mitochondrial COI gene and one of the Carbamoylphosphate synthase domain protein (CAD) gene, generated through PCR-based Sanger and Next-generation sequencing., , # A review of Appalachian Dasycerus Brongniart, and the recognition of cryptic diversity within Dasycerus carolinensis Horn (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Dasycerinae)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8kprr4xvd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8kprr4xvd)

## Description of the data and file structure

This data set consists of one nexus-formatted file containing aligned sequences of two mitochondrial COI regions and one Carbamoylphosphate synthase domain protein (CAD) region for the staphylinid rove beetle genus *Dasycerus*. Altogether, the data set includes 198 taxa (including 2 non-Dasycerus outgroups) and 1667 nucleotide positions (COIa = 1 -421; COIb = 422 -1157; CAD = 1158 -1667). Nexus files may be opened in Mesquite, and analyzed in numerous phylogenetics software packages.

## Sharing/Access information

The unaligned sequences may be accessed from GenBank with the following link:

* [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=Dasycerus+caterino](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore...