Mesoconius gelbifacies, Marshall, 2019

Marshall, Stephen A., 2019, A revision of the genus Mesoconius Enderlein (Diptera, Micropezidae, Taeniapterinae), European Journal of Taxonomy 548, pp. 1-126 : 104-106

Mesoconius gelbifacies sp. nov.

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:2348A024-0CCA-4039-8599-879B5EF98D87

Fig. 42 A–C

Etymology

This species is named for its bright yellow face, a feature also found in the closely related M. apicalis sp. nov.

Material examined

Holotype

ECUADOR • ♀; Napo, Baeza ; 2000 m a.s.l.; 1 Mar. 1979; S.A. Marshall leg.; MYCRO0338-18 sequenced for CO1; QCAZ.

Description (female holotype only)

LENGTH. 15 mm.

COLOUR. Dark brown to black, with white-yellow face and yellow clypeus, gena, palpus, fore and hind tarsus, and hind tibia; mid and hind femora with a broad orange middle band. Frontal vitta velvety black; parafacial, gena and vibrissal angle black; abdominal T1+2 reddish-black; antenna reddish, except for brown dorsal surface of first flagellomere. Wing membrane evenly and lightly infuscated, except for a large, indistinct central clear area in cell r 4+5. Oviscape microtrichose on basal half, distally shiny black, with a brownish tip.

HEAD. Epicephalon and paracephalon smooth and shiny, orbital strips striate and shiny; frontal vitta posteriorly broad and gradually narrowed to back of head, broadly meeting anterior margin of frons and laterally linked to eyes by angled black bands. Outer vertical bristle absent, inner vertical bristle strong, postocellar bristles strong, close and far back on the back of the head, separated from inner vertical bristles by approximately the length of a bristle. One small lower fronto-orbital bristle, upper frontoorbital bristle absent.

THORAX. Cervical sclerite with a vertical ridge separating a partially bulbous, microtrichose, dark posterior portion from a small, pale, flat, depressed, bare anterior portion; posterior portion flat along anterior and dorsal margins. Prosternum microtrichose, with some small setulae. Notum microtrichose, with rows of small acrostichal and dorsocentral setulae and scattered setulae above postpronotal lobe; postpronotal lobe microtrichose, with some scattered small setulae, anterior face shiny and almost vertical, posterior face sloped and microtrichose, except for a carinate extension on ventral corner. Dorsocentral bristle slightly longer than scutellum. Scutellum with four small discal setulae and long apical bristles (longer than scutellum). Katatergite not prominent, rounded and indistinctly convex. Vertical row of katepisternal bristles yellow. Fore coxae with anteroventral brown setae, other coxae with anteroventral golden setae.

ABDOMEN. T1 and T2 forming petiole; T1+2 2× length of T3.

FEMALE ABDOMEN. Bursa short, rugose; ventral receptacle slender and extending far beyond bursa. Common part of spermathecal duct as long as bursa, single duct arising from side of common duct at midpoint, constricted at base and at start of stem, leading to elongate, clubbed single spermatheca. Paired duct uniformly smooth or indistinctly striate, slightly expanded before apex, where it splits into the paired spermathecal stems, each of which has a large swelling and bends at right angles before reaching short, oval, reticulate-surfaced paired spermathecae.

Remarks

This species is similar to M. apicalis sp. nov., from which it differs in having the postocellar portion of the frontal vitta broad and not pointed, the parafacial and oviscape black, upper fronto-orbital bristles absent, the epicephalon smooth, and the mid and hind femora black almost to the apex. These species appear on the same branch of a CO1 tree, but they are deeply divergent ( Fig. 50 ).

Figures

Fig. 42. A–C. Mesoconius gelbifacies sp. nov. A–B. Holotype, ♀, QCAZ. C. Spermathecae and associated structures. — D–E. M. keili sp. nov., holotype, ♀, QCAZ, oviscape missing.

Fig. 50. Maximum likelihood tree from CO1 barcodes. Sequences were aligned using BOLD (amino acid based HMM) and then manually corrected. Maximum likelihood analysis was performed in RAxML (ver. 8.2) using GTR-G with 100 replicates.