Ceraleurodicus duckei Penny & Arias, 1980

Canty, Roy J., Martini, Biancamaria & Wanke, Dominic, 2023, Three new species of Neotropical Ceraleurodicus Hempel (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) found in the Natural History Museum (London) collection, with notes and a puparial key to species, Zootaxa 5277 (2), pp. 313-338 : 323-324

Ceraleurodicus duckei Penny & Arias, 1980

NOMENCLATURE:

Ceraleurodius [sic] duckei Penny & Arias, 1980: 903–905 , misspelling of genus name.

Distribution. Brazil ( Penny & Arias 1980; Dooley 2022; Ouvrard & Martin 2022).

Host. Unknown ( Penny & Arias 1980; Dooley 2022; Ouvrard & Martin 2022).

Material examined. No specimens were available for study; only the original description and associated illustrations.

Redescription

Puparium: Unknown.

Adults. No adults were available for this study. The following is based on the original description and images of the forewing from Penny & Arias (1980).

The forewing ( Fig. 13b ) has falcate sculpting; six times along the apical, posterior, and anal margins. The base colour is dark fuscous. Golden spots are located basally along the costal and anal margins, centrally between Rs and M, and apically extending from behind the end of Rs to the costal margin (difficult to observe on the available illustrations).

R splits into R 1 and Rs, at approximately a quarter of the wing length away from the wing apex. R 1 curves up and basally, terminating at the costal margin. Rs curves down and across, terminating at the apical margin. M splits from R near the base of the wing. Approximately 1/5th of the way along the wing from the base, M curves up slightly to level out into a more latitudinal direction. At approximately halfway along the wing’s length, M begins to curve towards and then terminates at the posterior margin, at the second falcate indent from the costa. Cu apparently a clear, straight line (although this is difficult to observe on the available illustrations). According to the illustrations, running between the wing apex and where R splits into R 1 and Rs, there is a fine, undulating structure.

Comments. There is only one adult male specimen of this species currently known. Therefore, not only can males and females not be compared to each other, there are no other specimens for meaningful intra- and interspecific comparisons. This species is also somewhat dubiously placed within this genus, with no discussion by Penny & Arias (1980) as to their reasoning why. Consequently, there is a danger that the description available is an incomplete assessment of the species.

The absence of known puparia also makes it difficult to fully compare this species to most of the other species in this genus. Considering that the classification of whiteflies is largely based on puparial morphology ( Gill 1990), which appears to be true for this genus also, this opens up the possibility that the specimen is either the adult form of another species in this genus that has no associated adults, or that it belongs to another genus.

Figures

FIGURE 13. Line drawings showing adult wings of: (a) Ceraleurodicus assymmetrus (Bondar), (b) C. duckei Penny & Arias, and (c) C. varus (Bondar).