Macrophya parvula ( Konow, 1884 )

Macek, Jan, 2012, About Macrophya parvula and larvae of several Central European Macrophya (Hymenoptera: Tenthredinidae), Zootaxa 3487, pp. 65-76 : 72-74

Macrophya parvula ( Konow, 1884)

( Figs. 18 , 21, 22 )

Type material examined. Holotype, female ( DEI): Labelled: ‘ Macrophya parvula m. Thuring.’; ‘Coll. Konow’; ‘ Lectotypus Macrophyla parvula Konow, 1884 female design. A. Taeger 1988 [red label]’.

Additional material examined. Adults. Moravia mer.: White Carpathians PLA: Čertoryje NNR (7170), 29.v.2006, 1 male, MT; Machová NR (7171), 8.v.2007, 1 male, MT; 28.v.2007, 1 male, MT; 2.viii.2007, 1 male, MT; 13.v.2008, 1 female, swept; 10.viii.2010, 1 male, MT; Jazevčí NNR (7171), 12.v.2009, 2 males, MT; 2.vi.2009, 2 males, MT; 25.vi.2009, 1 female, 2 males, MT; 5.viii.2009, 1 male, MT; 24.viii.2009, 2 males, MT. Immature stages: Moravia mer.: White Carpathians PLA: Machová NR (7171), 30.vi.2005, 12 larvae on Serratula tinctoria ; Čertoryje NNR (7170), 31.vii.2006, 3 larvae on Serratula tinctoria ; 25.ix. 2008, 1 eonymph on Serratula tinctoria .

Revised description of adult. Female. Length 6–7 mm. Colouration. Body black; whitish-yellow colour: labrum, base of mandibles, two small pale spots at the base of lateral postocellar furrows, posterior margin of pronotum, anterior margin of tegulae, the distal part of the interior side of the femora, the apex of the meso- and metafemora, the interior part of the tibiae, the base and a large spot on the tibia, the lower part of all tarsi, a narrow strip alongside the posterior margin of the first abdominal tergite and the last abdominal tergite; red-brown colour: the tips of the mandibles.

Head in dorsal view transverse, slightly receding behind the eyes; postocellar area slightly convex, transverse; lateral postocellar furrows distinct, deep posteriorly; POL: OOL: OOCL = 1.2: 1.5: 1; frontal area convex with deep medial furrow; clypeus slightly convex with distal margin concave; relative lengths of flagellomeres about 1.2: 0.8: 5: 3.6: 2.9: 2.5: 2: 1.3: 1.5; head strongly punctate, more densely on the frons than on the vertex.

Thorax. Front lobe of mesoscutum smooth covered with deep punctures, median groove broad and distinct; lateral lobe of mesoscutum covered with more scattered and more shallow punctures; mesoscutellum convex, smooth with large punctures; mesopleuron coriaceous covered with dense large punctures in the middle and upper part of mesepisternum and with scattered very fine punctures on the ventral part of the mesepisternum; tarsus subequal to the length of the tibia, basitarsus a little longer than the three following tarsal segments combined; interior tibial spur a little longer than half of basitarsus; claws bifid at tips; wings hyaline.

Abdomen cylindrical, smooth and lustrous; hypopygium transverse, slightly sinuate posteriorly; sawsheath shorter than tibia, rounded apically, in dorsal aspect slightly tapered toward the apex, covered with dense, slightly curved hairs; cerci very short, as long as half of the length of the sawsheath, and rounded apically.

Male. Length 5.5–6.5 mm. Males are similar to females, but the pale colour pattern is less developed, especially on the clypeus, pronotum, tegulae and the first abdominal segment. Penis valve as in Fig. 22 d.

Notes on identification of adults. Macrophya parvula is very similar to M. carinthiaca (Klug, 1817) from which it differs by the combination of characters given in Table 1 .

Description of last instar larva. Body length 10–12 mm: head pale brownish, body pale green, covered with whitish waxy bloom; head with short pubescence, clypeus with four setae, labrum with six setae, mandibles with one seta, stipes with one seta, palpifer with three setae, the second article of maxillary palpus with one seta. Abdominal segments with seven annulets; body surface covered with tiny dense microtrichia; annulets 2, 4, 7 with 6–8 scatterd tiny setae, annulet 2 with two, annulet 4 with three short, pale conical glandubae; spiracles brown, the first postspiracular lobe with one glanduba and 5–6 tiny setae, the second postspiracular lobe with one glanduba and 6–7 tiny setae, subspiracular lobe with 10–13 tiny setae and one glanduba, surpedal lobe with one glanduba and 11–13 tiny setae; the exterior side of proleg bare, the interior near the base with 6–7 setae.

Bionomics. Habitat: intermittently wet meadows. Univoltine. Flight period from May to mid-July; larval period from mid-June to mid-August. Host plant: Serratula tinctoria (Macek 2009) . The sluggish larvae can be found during the day coiled on the underside of leaves. Infested plants are traced by the large holes in the leaves left by feeding larvae. Larval development takes about one month; the eonymph rests for a longer time (up to six weeks) coiled on the underside of the leaves of various surrounding vegetation before burrowing into the soil for hibernation diapause. Adults of both sexes emerged from the reared larvae in the spring of the following year.

Discussion. Since Konow’s (1884) description based on a single female specimen (holotype by monotypy), this rare species has only been recorded recently in two European countries, –by Chevin (1997) from France and by Macek (2008, 2009,) from the Czech Republic. All Czech specimens comes from the southern part of the Bílé Karpaty PLA (see Konvička et al. 2012), where the species is widely distributed on the species-rich intermittently wet meadows with Serratula tinctoria , the food plant of the larvae.

A male incorrectly assigned to this species by Konow (1887) gave rise to misidentification of male specimens as this species by later authors ( Muche 1968, 1969; Liston 1987). Taeger (1989) correctly identified Konow’s male specimen to Macrophya punctum-album (Linné, 1767). This implies, that the male of M. parvula remained unknown until this paper. The rich samples collected from Malaise traps as well, as from rearing larvae, have provided a large series of both sexes, enabling the correct identification of the male, which is illustrated here for the first time.

Figures

FIGURES 18 – 20. Macrophya Dahlbom, 1835, last instar larvae (a—lateral view, b—dorsal view): 18 — M. parvula (Konow, 1884); 19 — M. erythrocnema Costa, 1859; 20 — M. recognata Zombori, 1979. Scale: 10 mm.

FIGURES 21 – 22. Macrophya parvula (Konow, 1884): 21 — female: a—dorsal overview; b—head, frontal view; c—head, dorsal view. 22 — male: a—dorsal overview; b—head, frontal view; c—head, dorsal view; d—penis valve. Scale: for dorsal overview: 5 mm; for head: 2 mm; for penis valve: 0.5 mm.

Tables

TABLE 1. Comparative table of identification characters of Macrophya parvula (Konow, 1884) and M. carinthiaca (Klug, 1817).

	M. parvula	M. carinthiaca
head	punctation strong, dense	punctation fine, scattered
mesepisternum	strongly punctated with middle part coriaceous	finely punctated, with middle part with smooth interspaces
tegula	black with pale anterior margin	yellow
1st abdominal tergite	with narrow discontinuous pale strip on the posterior margin	with wide, continuous posterior pale strip
trochanter, trochantellus	black	yellow