Voconia monodi (Villiers, 1963) Castillo & Rédei & Weirauch, 2022

Castillo, Stephanie, Rédei, Dávid & Weirauch, Christiane, 2022, Pseudocetherinae (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) revisited: phylogeny and taxonomy of the lobe-headed bugs, European Journal of Taxonomy 788 (1), pp. 1-95 : 66-67

Voconia monodi (Villiers, 1963) comb. nov.

Fig. 17

Pseudocethera monodi Villiers, 1963b: 532 , figs 14–15.

Revised diagnosis

Distinguished from other species of Voconia by the following combination of characters: short body length (about 7.0 mm long); coarsely granulose head and pronotum; maxillary plates not adjacent to and far surpass clypeal apex; maxillary plates in lateral view wide, about twice the width of the scape and not toothed apically; antennifer with long lateral spine. It is recognized from the micropterous V. schoutedeni by the paired, short, and not prominent longitudinal carinae on tergum II, not reaching the posterior margin of the segment; reliefs of the anterior lobe of the pronotum less strong, effaced in front; and indistinct ocelli.

Type material

Holotype GUINEA • ♀; “Région du Mont Nimba” [ Mount Richard-Molard region ], “ Camp du Gouan ” [Guinea camp]; 5 Apr. 1957; L.A.V. leg.; prairie; MNHN.

Redescription

Female

BODY LENGTH. About 7.0 mm; micropterous.

COLORATION. Head: yellowish brown. Thorax: Pronotum yellowish in front and on the sides, brown on the rest of the surface; scutellum brown. Micropterous wing: yellowish. Legs: brown with proximal and

distal part of femur and tarsus testaceous. Abdomen: dark brown, dorsal laterotergites with anterior half yellow.

INTEGUMENT AND VESTITURE. Head and pronotum: coarsely granulose with setigerous tubercles; interocular region with two pairs of large setigerous tubercles paramedially; antennifer with long lateral spine. Legs: posterior row of protuberances on mid and hind femora with three or four spines.

STRUCTURE. Head: scape not reaching head apex and longer than clypeus; apices of maxillary plates in dorsal view directed straight; clypeus in dorsal view narrower than maxillary plates; clypeal apex round, narrowed; eye width in dorsal view narrower than synthlipsis; ocelli absent; postocular region in dorsal view longer than eye, lateral margins subrectangular; labial segment I in lateral view straight, surpassing posteroventral eye margin; pronotal anterolateral angles long, flared laterally; scutellar spine reduced, slightly raised. Abdomen: anterior margin of terga carinulate; tergum II with paired, short, and not prominent longitudinal carinae.

Male

Unknown.

Distribution ( Fig. 17 )

This species is known from Northwest Africa.

Remarks

Specimens were on loan and not available for this study. Consequently, this description and localities were inferred from the French description, illustrations, and key provided by Villiers ( Villiers 1963b, 1964). Villiers (1963b) includes an additional specimen from Guinea that was not treated as type material that we could not examine and have limited information for. We therefore refrain from including it. A drawer image of two specimens from the BMNH in 2011 suggests that this species may be distributed in Sierra Leone (collection event: 11 May 1926) and Nigeria, but their identification is difficult to confirm without better images and without the holotype.

Figures

Fig. 17. The distribution of species of Voconia Stål, 1866 in Africa.