Procloeon Bengtsson, 1915

Gattolliat, Jean-Luc, Samraoui, Boudjema, Benhadji, Nadhira, Kechemir, Lina, Zrelli, Sonia, El Yaagoubi, Sara, El Moutaouakil, Majida El Alami & Sartori, Michel, 2023, Baetidae (Baetidae, Ephemeroptera) in the Maghreb: state of the art, key, and perspectives, ZooKeys 1139, pp. 137-163 : 137

9. Procloeon Bengtsson, 1915

Diagnosis.

1) Gills I-VI with simple or double lamellae, if double, the upper lamella much smaller than lower lamella; 2) legs elongated, claw elongated with two rows of small to minute denticles; 3) labial palp conical and truncated; 4) lateral margin of abdominal segments VII-IX with strong spines; 5) paracercus subequal in length to cerci; 6) cerci with strong spines on the outer margin.

Remarks.

Procloeon stagnicola Soldán & Thomas, 1983 (Fig. 5C ) is rather similar to the European species Procloeon bifidum (Bengtsson, 1912). Old reports of P. bifidum most certainly refer to P. stagnicola . This species possesses gills with single lamellae ( Soldán and Thomas 1983a). It is widely distributed in the Maghreb. Besides this endemic species, reports of other species of the genus are more problematic. Reports of Procloeon pennulatum (Eaton, 1870) are limited to Morocco (Fig. 5D ). Within this species, morphological comparison between Maghrebian and Central European specimens was still not performed, and no molecular analyses are available. The conspecificity needs to be confirmed by morphological and molecular evidence; the identification is probably mostly based on presence of hindwings and very long claws. Procloeon concinnum (Eaton, 1885) was originally described from Portugal and is only known at the imaginal stage: eggs, larvae and subimagoes remain unknown ( Bauernfeind and Soldán 2012). It is unclear which characters allow a reliable assignment of specimens from Morocco to this species, especially at the larval stage ( El Bazi et al. 2017; Khadri et al. 2017; Mabrouki et al. 2017; Guellaf et al. 2021). As mentioned above, Centroptilum algiricum Eaton, 1899 should be assigned to Procloeon based to the shape of the hindwing, and may be the imaginal stage of one of the known species of Procloeon ( Samraoui et al. 2021c).

Figures

Figure 5. Baetidae: larvae in toto in dorsal view A Nigrobaetis numidicus B Nigrobaetis rhithralis C Procloeon stagnicola D Procloeon cf. pennulatum E Similicloeon simile.