The first firefly fossil (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) from Dominican amber

Fireflies (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) comprise ~2,500 extant species worldwide (Ferreira et al., 2020). Considering the extant diversity of firefly species, their fossil record is scant, with only eight taxa across four subfamilies: Luciolinae, Ototretinae, Lamprohizinae, and Lampyrinae (Supplementary file 1; Kazantsev, 2024). Dominican amber may have the best quality of preservation among fossil resins, with a rich diversity of fossil specimens (Grimaldi & Engel, 2005) from the early Miocene (20–15 Ma) (Iturralde-Vinent & MacPhee, 2019). However, no firefly taxon was previously known from this deposit. Here, we describe the first Lampyridae fossil from Dominican amber. It represents a new species of the extant Neotropical genus Lychnacris Motschulsky, 1853, which has 19 extant species known from the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean (Kazantsev & Perez-Gelabert, 2009, 2013; Perez-Gelabert, 2011).