Necroraphidia Genus and species indet. 2

Fuente, Ricardo Perez-de la, Penalver, Enrique, Delclos, Xavier & Engel, Michael S., 2012, Snakefly diversity in Early Cretaceous amber from Spain (Neuropterida, Raphidioptera), ZooKeys 204, pp. 1-40 : 23

Genus and species indet. 2 Figs 13B, 14B

Material.

CES 376, from El Soplao amber; forewing apex and the area surrounding pterostigma from an additional wing. Some additional dorsoproximal parts of the wing are also present but with a very poor preservation, so just a few more characters can be elucidated. An indeterminate hymenopteran is present as a syninclusion.

Descriptive notes.

Length as preserved ca. 5.0 (wing well preserved only in 3.4 of that length), maximum width as preserved 2.7; wing apex pointed, positioned within Rs series; wing veins brown, meeting wing margins without bifurcating; veins with strong, short setae, especially abundant on C; Sc ending and proximal r-rs crossvein (1r-rs?; very faintly preserved) situated at about same wing length, pterostigma slightly widening distally, infumate; pterostigma with a very faint subdistal, rather straight (not conspicuously arcuate), strongly oblique crossvein; uncertain if pterostigmal division present; apical branches of Rs, MA and MP subparallel; two apical branches of R distal to pterostigma; Rs with four branches, posteriormost originating before distalmost r-rs crossvein (2r-rs?), separated from it by much more than its length; rs-ma and distalmost ma-mp crossveins lacking in preserved wing fragment, so most likely with a proximal position; MA most likely with three branches.

Comments.

Despite the fact that CES 376 is distinct from the other taxa in Spanish amber, it is not named as its preserved parts are not enough to resolve its affinities. The wing fragments show a high resemblance with some mesoraphidiids such as Mesoraphidia obliquivenatica (Ren, 1994) and Caloraphidia glossophylla , both from the Cretaceous compression deposit of Liaoning (China), as long as all of them share the presence of a strongly oblique, rather straight pterostigmal crossvein in a rather distal position and a distal portion of the wing with long apical branches and without crossveins other than the 2r-rs crossvein ( Ren 1994: p. 134, fig. 4; 1997: p. 184, fig. 11). Caloraphidia glossophylla possesses subparallel apical branches of Rs, MA and MP, the Sc ending and the 1r-rs crossvein situated at about the same wing length, the 2r-rs crossvein closer to the end of the pterostigma than to the pterostigmal crossvein, and a pointed apex positioned within the Rs series, but in this species Rs has only three branches. By contrast, although Mesoraphidia obliquivenatica has Rs with four branches as in CES 376, the apical branches of Rs, MA and MP are not subparallel, the Sc ends in a more basal position than the 1r-rs crossvein, the 2r-rs crossvein is closer to the pterostigmal crossvein than to the end of the pterostigma, and the apex is more rounded and positioned between R and Rs. CES 376 is also quite similar to the wing apex of the compression fossil Iberoraphidia dividua Jepson, Ansorge and Jarzembowski, 2011, from El Montsec (Spain), Early Barremian in age, with its relatively simple venation, a Sc ending and a 1r-rs crossvein situated at about the same wing length, the 2r-rs, rs-ma and 2ma-mp crossveins not apically placed, the four branches of Rs, with the posteriormost branch of Rs originating before the 2r-rs crossvein, and the relatively simple apical fork of MA and MP ( Jepson et al. 2011). CES 376 differs, however, in the presence of a pterostigmal crossvein (although in Iberoraphidia dividua the distal portion of the divided pterostigma could be basally closed by a crossvein), only two apical branches to R distal to the pterostigma (not three as in Iberoraphidia dividua ), the posteriormost branch of Rs more proximally placed (separated from the distalmost r-rs by much more than its length, versus much shorter in Iberoraphidia dividua ), and the more pointed wing apex which is positioned within the Rs series (rather than between R and Rs in Iberoraphidia dividua ).