Persiatelurina Molero, Tahami, Gaju & Sadeghi, 2018

Tahami, Mohadeseh Sadat, Molero, Rafael, Gaju, Miquel & Sadeghi, Saber, 2018, Discovery of representatives of the family Nicoletiidae (Insecta: Zygentoma) from caves of Iran, with descriptions of two new supraspecific taxa, Zootaxa 4369 (2), pp. 253-269 : 254-255

Persiatelurina Molero, Tahami, Gaju & Sadeghi new genus

Diagnosis. Small silverfish. Body fusiform, slightly pigmented with yellow and covered by scales, including head and coxae. Dorsal scales of nota dimorphic, rounded or subrectangular. Apex of macrosetae usually bifid. Head free, dorsally visible. Setae of cephalic capsule restricted to frontal and anterolateral areas. Pedicel of males with small apophysis and fovea. Mandibles with well-developed molar area. Galea with two apical cones, one of them larger. Apical article of labial palp oval. Legs typical of Atelurini, with lyriform spines; pretarsi with small pulvilli. Urotergal macrosetae restricted to the infralateral area. Urotergite X with concave posterior margin, the posterior corners with a strong macroseta and with two setae on each side of the posterior notch; in the male with 1+1 areas with pegs on ventral side of tergite. Urosternite II with 1+1 submedian, nearly contiguous vesicles. Urosternite VII with pseudovesicles. Urosternites VII‒IX each with a pair of styli. Vesicles and styli absent from remaining sternites. Ovipositor spindle-shaped, with thin setae only. Terminal filaments short, cerci of the male with pegs, paracercus without pegs.

Etymology. The name of the new genus, Persiatelurina , derives from the historic name of Iran, Persia, combined with the name suffix “-atelurina”, used for several genera of Atelurinae , especially those of small size. Gender: Feminine.

Discussion. This genus fits within the tribe Atelurini as established by Mendes (2012) due to similarity of body scales, male antennal pedicel, maxillae, lyriform spines of legs, pretarsi, abdominal vesicles on urosternite II, pseudovesicles, male terminal filaments and female subgenital plate and ovipositor.

Three previously described genera bear, as does Persiatelurina n. gen., three pairs of styli (on urosternites VII‒IX) and only 1+1 very close submedian vesicles on urosternite II. The remaining urosternites lack vesicles and urosternite VII bears pseudovesicles. All three genera are monotypic: Proatelura Silvestri, 1916 , widely distributed in the Oriental Region, Proatelurina Paclt, 1963 , circum-Mediterranean, and Nipponatelurina Mendes & Machida, 1994 , from Japan. Unfortunately, the male sex of this last taxon is not known.

Proatelura differs from Persiatelurina new genus in the configuration of the pretarsus (lacking pulvilli and with a striated, leaf-like empodium) and by the glabrous posterior notch of urotergite X. Proatelurina differs in having only one apical conule on the galea. Moreover, the dorsal scales are uniform in shape (dimorphic in the nota of the new genus) and in the hind margin of the laterotergite there is only one robust macroseta (at least two in the new genus).

Differentiation from Nipponatelurina is slightly more problematic. According to the original description of the genus, Mendes & Machida (1994) reported 1‒2 pairs of setae on each side of the posterior notch of urotergite X. However, Mendes (2012) stated that Nipponatelurina had only one seta inserted on each side of the posterior notch and used the one-pair character in his keys to the atelurine genera. The gonapophyses of female Nipponatelurina were described as “provided of thin setae only”, which implies that the ovipositor lacks a spiny area in the apex of gonapophyses. This area is not represented by Mendes & Machida (1994) in their illustrations of the ovipositor, but its absence would be a very unusual character inside Atelurinae . Following the criteria of Mendes (2012), these differences are useful for distinguishing genera. Therefore, these specimens are placed in a new genus.

Further studies are needed to establish if these generic criteria are congruent with phylogenetic relationships. Apart from molecular studies, some other morphological characteristics, such as those based on scale shape and arrangement, antennal sensilla, and secondary sexual characteristics in Nipponatelurina males, could provide in the future new differences to confirm the generic status of these three taxa.

During the preparation of this work, a second species of Nipponatelurina was described by Kaplin (2016) from Abkhazia (south-western flank of Caucasus), but an examination of Kaplin’s illustrations and description reveals that the posterior notch of the urotergite X has two pairs of setae and the apex of the gonapophysis has a spiny area. These character states suggest that the Caucasian species should be placed within the new genus Persiatelurina and therefore we propose Persiatelurina caucasica ( Kaplin, 2016) n. comb. (= Nipponatelurina caucasica Kaplin, 2016 ).