Cryphocricos obscuratus Usinger, 1947

Sites, Robert W., 2021, A review of Cryphocricos Signoret, 1850 (Naucoridae: Cryphocricinae) with descriptions of three new species, Zootaxa 4958 (1), pp. 72-94 : 83

Cryphocricos obscuratus Usinger

( Figs 21 , 33, 34 )

Cryphocricos obscuratus Usinger 1947 : Ann. Entomol. Soc. Amer. 40:338–340.

Type repository: California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco, USA) .

Type locality: Panama: Colón Province, 6 miles east of Porto Bello, XX Plantation. The type series was most likely collected in Río Cascaja .

Discussion: The holotype is an intact brachypterous male ( Fig. 21 ). The allotype and two other specimens from the same collection are in the type repository. One paratype is in the Essig Museum, University of California, Berkeley. There is no mention of C. obscuratus in the literature beyond the original description other than its inclusion in the La Rivers (1971) and Herrera (2013) catalogs.

Diagnosis: Usinger (1947) reported this species to be the smallest described at the time with the holotype male measuring 6.53 mm and female 6.5 mm. In comparison to C. barozzii and C. breddini , the anteocular portion of the head is shorter and body size smaller ( Usinger 1947). It differs from C. mexicanus by its smaller size, darker color, and rounded and more coarsely crenulate lateral margins of the pronotum. Further, the posterolateral corners “are less strongly produced posteriorly, the disk of the pronotum is without apparent depressions at the middle and the front femora are shorter and stouter” ( Usinger 1947). In the key to brachypterous adults, C. obscuratus was distinguished from C. latus of Costa Rica by the body width less than half its length, the hemelytral commissure shorter than the scutellum, and length <7 mm ( Usinger 1947).

Figures

FIGURES 21–23. Holotypes of (21) Cryphocricos obscuratus, dorsal, (22) Cryphocricos peruvianus, dorsal and (23) Cryphocricos peruvianus, ventral. Figure 23 courtesy of H.D.D. Rodrigues.

FIGURES 33–34. (33) Ventral surface of left embolium of Cryphocricos sandyae n.sp. (left) and Cryphocricos obscuratus (right), white arrows indicate margin of embolium. (34) Ventral surface of left foreleg of Cryphocricos sandyae n.sp. (top) and Cryphocricos obscuratus (bottom), yellow arrows indicate posteroventral row of tubercles.