Morphological separation of fifth instar larvae of Apatania cypria from European Apataniidae

The three micro-endemic species of Apataniana Mosely 1936 are restricted to Greece and are the only Apataniidae species recorded in European ecoregion 6 (Hellenic Western Balkan; Graf et al. 2008); a synoptic key to their larvae has been provided by Waringer & Malicky (2016).

In the context of the larval key for genus Apatania (Waringer et al. 2015, Waringer et al. in revieW), A. cypria can be separated from its knoWn European congeners by the folloWing morphomatrix:

- setae at anterior edge of pronotum long, tapering and With flexible tips (Fig. 3, as); - transverse setal band at abdominal dorsum I interrupted at center (Fig. 9, dotted oval); - setal ratio (= median separation 'a' of pair of frontoclypeal setae #5 divided by distance 'b' to next frontoclypeal border; Fig. 1)> 8;

- at height of metathoracic lateral sclerite (sa 3), setae lacking betWeen dorsal setae and setae associated With lateral protuberance on abdominal segment I (Fig. 9, dotted oval).

At this point, A. cypria keys together With A. subtilis and A. theischingerorum . This trio of species can be separated by dorsal gills present on segments V and VI in A. theischingerorum but missing in A. subtilis and A. cypria, by the number of setae on the metanotal lateral sclerites ( A. cypria: 15–17 setae, A. subtilis: 12 setae, A. theischingerorum: 9–10 setae per sclerite) and by their distribution pattern: A. cypria is a Levantine species of Cyprus and Lebanon, Whereas A. theischingerorum has been recorded exclusively on the Iberian peninsula, and A. subtilis in the Caucasus area (Lepneva 1966; Martín et al. 2015).