Ptilophorus purcharti, Batelka, 2012

Batelka, Jan, 2012, Ptilophorus purcharti sp. nov., the first ripiphorid from Socotra Island, with an account of the biogeography of the Ptilophorini (Coleoptera: Ripiphoridae), Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae 52, pp. 269-285 : 275

Ptilophorus sex ratio in collections

Only males are known for P. purcharti sp. nov. In respect of the available material of other Ptilophorus species this is obviously not accidental. Using the data from my collection as a reference, not a single female is present in a sample of 30 specimens from Africa, only four females are present among 39 specimens of P. fischeri (Ménétriés, 1848) from Uzbekistan, and only 12 females are present in my material of P. dufourii from 13 countries (96 specimens in total). This unbalanced sex ratio, when males outnumber females in the collections seems to be a sampling artefact caused by collecting methods used and by different behaviour of males and females of Ptilophorus . While males are easy to capture by sweeping or even by hand when they are sitting on vegetation (see above for P. purcharti sp. nov.; identical behaviour was observed by myself in P. dufourii in Bulgaria and Tunisia), females apparently spend most of their life in hidden, so they are only accidentally collected. An unusual sample, that undoubtedly originated in one collecting event, consisting of 30 females and only a single male of P. dufourii is stored in the Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin). One of these specimens has an original handwritten label ‘30 melandria [= former misidentification], H. 28.4.21’, and all 31 specimens were later (probably in the 1960’s or 1970’s) provided with a label ‘Hara, 28.4.1921, Palästina’ [most probably = Al Harrah, ca. 33°04′N, 35°58′E, now situated in Syria]. Although the correctness of the subsequent label transcription cannot be verified, it is clear that the series must have been collected by some special technique or during some exceptional circumstance.