Bregmosina howdeni, Marshall, Stephen A., 2013

Marshall, Stephen A., 2013, Bregmosina, a new Neotropical genus of Limosininae (Diptera: Sphaeroceridae), Zootaxa 3641 (3), pp. 260-270 : 268

Bregmosina howdeni new species

Fig. 22

Description. Externally as described for B. obunca . Size 2.0 mm.

Male abdomen: Sternite 4 extensively overlapping sternite 5 but otherwise unmodified. Sternite 5 as illustrated for B. obunca ( Fig. 18 ); pale medially, made up almost entirely of two long lobes and their broad bases, lobes as long as rest of sternite and pointed and incurved distally. Posteromedial point of sternite 5 weakly ridged. Ventral part of sternite 6 narrow but unmodified. Cerci separate, elongate-rectangular. Surstylus elongate, mostly parallel sided but ending in a weakly bilobed club. Postgonite canopener-shaped, circular distal notch about as broad as anterodistal lobe. Basiphallus with a prominent hook-like epiphallus. Distiphallus narrow, distal dorsal surface bilobed and with a conspicuously spiked surface.

Type material. Holotype (male, DEBU). ECUADOR. Pichincha Province, 47 km S Sto Domingo, Rio Palenque Biological Station, 17–25.ii.1979, S.A. Marshall. Paratype: ECUADOR. Rio Palenque Biological Station, 30.iv–5.v. 1987, 160 m, primary rain forest Malaise trap, L. Coote and B. Brown (1Ƥ, ROM 870002).

Comments. This species is closely related to B. obunca , known from Guyana and Costa Rica. Both type specimens were collected in one of the few remaining patches of primary rainforest in the western lowlands on the Pacific side of the Ecuadorian Andes. This species joins a growing list of fly taxa known only from the remarkable Rio Palenque Biological Station, a reserve now threatened as an increasingly isolated island of forest in a sea of intensive agriculture.

Etymology. Bregmosina howdeni is a patronym in honour of my MSc supervisor, coleopterist Henry Howden. Dr. Howden organized the 1979 trip to Rio Palenque during which I collected this and many other species still known only from Rio Palenque.

Figures

FIGURES 18 – 22. Bregmosina obunca and B. howdeni. 18, B. obunca female terminalia; 19, B. obunca aedeagus and associated structures left lateral; 20, B. obunca male terminalia ventral; 21, B. obunca epandrium and associated structures left lateral; 22, B. howdeni epandrium and associated structures left lateral. Abbreviations: SP, spermatheca; T 7, T 8, S 5, S 7, S 8, sternites and tergites; P, phallapodeme; PG, postgonite; H, hypandrium; C, cercus; B, basiphallus; D, distiphallus; SU, surstylus.