Metaplagia paulinesaribasae Fleming & Wood, 2021

Fleming, AJ, Wood, D. Monty, Smith, M. Alex, Hallwachs, Winnie & Janzen, Daniel, 2021, Revison of Metaplagia Coquillett (Diptera: Tachinidae) with description of five new species from Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica, Biodiversity Data Journal 9, pp. 68598-68598 : 68598

Metaplagia paulinesaribasae Fleming & Wood sp. n.

Materials

Type status: Holotype. Occurrence: catalogNumber: DHJPAR0018646 ; recordedBy: D.H. Janzen, W. Hallwachs; individualCount: 1; sex: Male; lifeStage: adult; occurrenceStatus: present; preparations: pinned; otherCatalogNumbers: ASTAI1293-07| 82-SRNP-382| BOLD:AAX4230; Taxon: scientificName: Metaplagia paulinesaribasae; phylum: Arthropoda ; class: Insecta ; order: Diptera ; family: Tachinidae ; genus: Metaplagia ; specificEpithet: paulinesaribasae; scientificNameAuthorship: Fleming & Wood, 2021; Location : continent: Central America ; country: Costa Rica; countryCode: CR; stateProvince: Guanacaste; county: Sector Santa Rosa ; locality: Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, Cafetal ; verbatimElevation: 280; verbatimLatitude: 10.8583; verbatimLongitude: -85.6109; verbatimCoordinateSystem: Decimal degrees; Identification : identifiedBy: AJ Fleming; dateIdentified: 2021; Event : samplingProtocol: Reared from the larva of the Sphingidae , Manduca lefeburii; verbatimEventDate: 24-Aug-1982; Record Level : language: en; institutionCode: CNC; collectionCode: Insects ; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Description

Male (Fig. 8), head (Fig. 8 c, d): fronto-orbital plate wide, gold tomentum over its entirety; vitta wide, 1/5 width of fronto-orbital plate; ocellar setae lateraloclinate with a slight proclinate skew; with 2 proclinate orbital setae and 1 reclinate orbital seta fronto-orbital plate with short black setulae interspersed amongst frontal setae; fronto-orbital setulae extending below lower margin of the pedicel, well into angle of parafacial; parafacial wholly gold tomentose; palps either slightly spathulate at tips, apically acutely inwardly curved, 3-4 setulae along lower margin, inner margin appearing bare; arista light brown-dark orange, distinctly lighter color than postpedicel. Thorax (Fig. 8 a, b): black ground color with pale brassy tomentum; 4 postpronotal setae; supra-alar setae 2:3; intra-alar setae 3:3; dorsocentral setae 3:3; acrostichal setae 3:3; katepisternum with 3 setae. Infrasquamal setae present. Scutellum black ground color, with tomentum concolorous with thorax; with five pairs marginal setae; apical scutellar setae 1/2 as long as subapical scutellars, sub-erect, arising above plane of marginal setae; basal scutellar subequal in length to subapical setae; subapical setae convergent, lateral scutellar setae can be convergent or strongly divergent; 2 pairs of scutellar discal setae set wider apart than subapical setae. Legs: black ground color; mid tibia with 2-3 strong anteroventral setae; tarsal claws and pulvilli shorter than last tarsomere. Wings: R1 bare, R4+5 setulose from node to crossvein r-m. Abdomen (Fig. 8 a, b): ground color black; ST1+2 glabrous black, silver-pale brassy tomentum occupying anterior 90% of T3-T5; tomentum thin to absent along ventral surface of abdomen; median marginal setae present on T3 and complete rows on T4 and T5.

Terminalia: holotype male not dissected.

Female: unknown at this time.

Diagnosis

Metaplagia paulinesaribasae sp. n. can be easily distinguished from all other Metaplagia by the following combination of traits: both fronto-orbital and parafacial gold and setulae on vein R4+5 not extending beyond crossvein r-m. It is distinguishable from all other congeners by the presence of an entirely gold fronto-orbital plate and parafacial. Metaplagia paulinesaribasae sp. n. is clearly distinguished by its COI sequence clustered within the Barcode Identification Number (BIN) BOLD:AAX4230.

Etymology

Metaplagia paulinesaribasae sp. n. is named in honor of Pauline Saribas for her many years of coordinating and administrating a plethora of problems and events in the Academic Office of the Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Distribution

Costa Rica, ACG, Guanacaste Province, 280 m elevation.

Ecology

Metaplagia paulinesaribasae sp. n. has been reared once from one species of Lepidoptera in the family Sphingidae : Manduca lefeburii ( Guérin-Méneville, 1844), in dry forest.