Agonochaetia incredibilis Povolný, 1965

Landry, Jean-François, Nazari, Vazrick, Bidzilya, Oleksiy, Huemer, Peter & Karsholt, Ole, 2017, Review of the genus Agonochaetia Povolný (Lepidoptera, Gelechiidae), and description of a new genus and species from the Canary Islands, Zootaxa 4300 (4), pp. 451-485 : 465

3. Agonochaetia incredibilis Povolný, 1965

( Figs 3 , 30 )

Agonochaetia incredibilis Povolný 1965: 487 . Type locality: Margellan , Uzbekistan. Povolný 2002a: 105.

Material examined. Holotype ♂ “Margel- | lan | 85. Hbr.” [brown hand-written]; “ Agonochaetia | incredibilis | Povolný, 1965 ” [white hand-written]; “HT” [white hand-written]; “St. 321” [dissection label, yellow typed]; “Gemalt von | Dr. F. Gregor | für Micr. Pal.” [printed orange] (ZMHU) (examined).

DNA Barcode BIN. Not barcoded.

Adult ( Fig. 3 ). Forewing length 5.8 mm; wingspan 12.6 mm. Forewing upper surface pale greyish brown suffused with darker brown scales, the latter forming an indistinct postmedian spot and lining the base of the apical and terminal fringe.

Male genitalia ( Fig. 30 ). Tegumen with TGN/TGL = 0.67, latero-ventral flange large and broadly rounded. Uncus trapezoid, 0.38x length of tegumen, apical margin rounded and medially cleft. Gnathos proximal arms short, thin, apices club-like and not mesially joined; mesio-distal arm indictinct. Culcitula a large, elongate, pouch-like lobe extended from near apex of uncus to below apex of proximal arms of gnathos. Vinculum transverse, distal margin with broad U-shaped mesial emargination (difficult to make out in the unspread holotype slide). Cucullus narrow, digitiform, with rounded and incurved apex. Sacculus with apex club-like, incurved. Paired glandiductor lobes needle-like, outwardly curved, longer than phallus, anterior 1/4 dilated. Phallus straight, stubby, apex with irregularly quadrate tooth, caecum only slightly wider than shaft.

Female genitalia. Unknown.

Diagnosis. A. incredibilis can be distinguished from other Agonochaetia by the tip of sacculus which is rounded and club-like, the cucullus without broad rounded lobe in the distal half, and most remarkably by its stubby phallus proportionally much shorter than the glandiductors. In all other Agonochaetia species, the phallus is slender and almost as long as the glandiductors, and the distal half of cucullus is broadened into a rounded ventral lobe.

Biology. Unknown.

Distribution ( Fig. 43 ). Only known from the holotype collected in Uzbekistan.

Remarks. The holotype genitalia were slide-mounted unspread with the glandiductors in situ but the phallus removed, thus its description is not based on an unrolled preparation as with the other species, making comparisons problematic. This is the type species of Agonochaetia and it is the only known specimen of the species. Povolný qualified the moth as “small” but it is difficult to figure out the context he was referring to because A. incredibilis was the only species included in the genus at the time.

After Povolný’s death the holotype of A. incredibilis has temporarily been passed to SMNK along with many other types of Gelechiidae which were borrowed from various European museums. It will be soon transferred to the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin as it belongs to the Staudinger collection deposited in that institution.

Figures

FIGURES 1 – 12. Adults. 1, A. conspersa ♂ (HT); 2, A. impunctella ♀ (HT); 3, A. incredibilis ♂ (HT); 4, A. intermedia ♂; 5, A. intermedia ♀; 6, A. lvovskyi ♂ (HT); 7, A. quartana ♀ (HT); 8, A. shawinigan ♂ (HT); 9 – 11, A. terrestrella ♀♀; 12, A. tuvella ♂.

FIGURES 29 – 32. Male genitalia of Agonochaetia species. 29, A. conspersa ♂ (HT) (slide VNZ 78); 30, A. incredibilis ♂ (HT) (slide St. 321); 31, A. intermedia ♂ (slide GEL 90 P. H.); 32, A. lvovskyi ♂ (HT) (slide 163 / 15 O. Bidzilya)

FIGURES 43 - 44. 43, Map of type localities (red stars) and distribution (red dots) of Agonochaetia and Canarischema (yellow star). 44, Bayesian inference of relationships between selected Gnorimoschemini genera based on COI barcode data. Values above nodes are posterior probabilities; those below nodes are bootstrap values from the Parsimony analysis (values from the Maximum Likelihood analysis were very similar).