Protohermes sublunatus, Liu, Xingyue, Hayashi, Fumio & Yang, Ding, 2013

Liu, Xingyue, Hayashi, Fumio & Yang, Ding, 2013, The Protohermes latus species group (Megaloptera: Corydalidae), with description of two new species from India and Myanmar, Zootaxa 3609 (5), pp. 513-519 : 517-518

Protohermes sublunatus sp. nov.

( Figures 2 , 6–8 )

Diagnosis. Head pale brown with frons and clypeus yellow. Pronotum pale brown, slightly reddish brown along lateral margin, strongly broadened in male. Wings immaculate, slightly grayish, with costal area slightly darker. Male ectoproct bilobed, dorsal lobe nearly semilune, slightly shorter than ninth tergum, ventral lobe thickly digitiform, visible in dorsal view.

Description. Male. Body length 50 mm; forewing length 44 mm, hindwing length 42 mm.

Head ( Fig. 2 ) yellowish brown, immaculate, with frons and clypeus yellow; postocular spine short and acutely produced. Compound eyes pale brown; ocelli pale yellow, medially margined black, lateral ocelli nearly touching median ocellus. Antenna subserrate, blackish brown, with scape and pedicel pale brown. Mouthparts yellow; mandibles reddish brown with apex and inner margin blackish brown.

Prothorax ( Fig. 2 ) yellowish brown, pronotum strongly broadened on anterolateral and posterolateral portions, and anteriorly produced into a ridge, slightly reddish brown along lateral margins. Meso- and metathorax yellow, slightly darker laterally. Forelegs reddish brown, but mid and hindlegs yellow, with dense, yellowish, short setae; tarsal claws reddish brown. Wings hyaline, slightly grayish, immaculate, except for costal cellules with indistinct grayish stripes; veins yellow to yellowish brown, slightly darker distally, bases of first and second anal veins on forewing black. Rs 7-branched; MA distally bifurcate; anterior branch of MP 4-branched, posterior branch of MP 2-branched; CuA 5-branched; humeral area well developed, with a feebly developed humeral crossvein; 11–14 crossveins between R and Rs.

Abdomen blackish brown. Ninth tergum ( Fig. 6 ) subtrapezoidal, anterior margin shallowly concaved, posterior margin with deeply V-shaped incision. Ninth sternum ( Fig. 7 ) about 1.5 times as long as ninth tergum, and nearly as wide as ninth tergum, posterior margin with broadly arcuate incision, forming a pair of digitiform lobes. Ninth gonostylus ( Fig. 7 ) unguiform and strongly curved inward, with sclerotized claw extremely slender and elongated. Ectoproct ( Figs. 6–7 ) bilobed dorsoventrally; dorsal lobe transversely wide, nearly semilune, slightly shorter than ninth tergum, with convex distal margin and transverse ruga subdistad; ventral lobe visible in dorsal view, elongate and thickly digitiform, much longer than dorsal lobe. Cercus invisible in dorsal view. Tenth gonocoxite ( Fig. 8 ) extremely small, arched, with lateral lobes short, digitiform and ventrally setose.

Female. Forewing length 54 mm, hindwing length 49 mm.

Genitalia same to that in P. latus .

Type material. Holotype 3, INDIA: Arunachal Pradesh, West Siang [28°24ʹN, 94°33ʹE], 1650 m, 20–30.VI.2012 (HFC). Paratype 1Ƥ, INDIA: Arunachal Pradesh, West Kameng, Shegaon [27°15ʹN, 92°22ʹE], 1.IX.1961, F. Schmid (CNC).

Distribution. India (Arunachal Pradesh).

Etymology. The specific epithet ‘ sublunatus ’ refers to the semilune dorsal lobe of the male ectoproct of the new species.

Remarks. The new species is much smaller than P. latus and P. sonus sp. nov. (forewing length 44 mm in holotype male, but 56–59 mm in males of P. l a t u s and 59 mm in holotype male of P. sonus sp. nov.). We could not find any useful characters in the female genitalia to distinguish this species from P. latus . Nevertheless, there is a tendency that the female of P. sublunatus sp. nov. is also smaller than females of the other two species (forewing length 54 mm in paratype female, but 55–62 mm in females of P. l a t u s). See Remarks of P. s o n u s sp. nov. for morphological comparison among males of the three group members.

Figures

FIGURE 1 – 2. Habitus of Protohermes spp. 1. Protohermes sonus sp. nov., male holotype; 2. Protohermes sublunatus sp. nov. Scale bar = 5.0 mm.

FIGURES 6 – 8. Protohermes sublunatus sp. nov., male holotype. 6. genitalia, dorsal view; 7. genitalia, ventral view; 8. tenth gonocoxite, ventral view. Scale bar = 1.0 mm.