Rhagovelia lansburyi, Zettel, 1995

Zettel, Herbert, Laciny, Alice & Freitag, Hendrik, 2020, Review of the genus Rhagovelia Mayr, 1865 (Insecta: Heteroptera: Veliidae) in the Palawan biogeographic region, the Philippines, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 68, pp. 810-837 : 822

Rhagovelia lansburyi species group

Diagnosis. Body stout, strongly dimorphic, female (length 3.0– 3.5 mm) much larger than male (2.3–2.9 mm). Body colour mainly black, pronotum with short transverse orange stripe anteriorly. Antennae and legs black, yellow at base. Setae on antennae and legs of normal length. Male: Foreleg modified for grasping, profemur incrassate, protibia strongly bent. Metafemur weakly enlarged, with reduced dentition. Paramere of male very short and upcurved. Female with groove on mesopleuron in front of mesacetabulum (to accommodate foreleg of male during mating). Apterous morph: Pronotum short, length shorter than eye length. Mesonotum widely exposed. Female with depressed area dorsal at base of abdomen. Metafemur without any dentition. Gonocoxa large, plate-like. Macropterous morph: Wings uniformly dark. Forewing with 2 closed cells in proximal third, anterior cell without pilosity. Wings of rare dealate morph (only one female known) broken off at mid-length. Abdominal carina reaching posterior margin of tergite 4.

Comparative notes. Relations of Rhagovelia lansburyi with other Southeast Asian Rhagovelia species are dubious. “Phoretic” males as in R. lansburyi are otherwise only known from the R. caesia group distributed on New Guinea and the southeastern Philippines, but many morphological characters deviate strongly. Some structures, e.g., forewing venation, indicate that R. lansburyi may have derived from the R. borneensis group, which is chiefly distributed on Borneo, with an outpost in northern Luzon. However, a strong size dimorphism of sexes is not reported for any species in this group.

Distribution. Rhagovelia lansburyi from Central Palawan is the only species placed in this group.