Acherontiella Absolon, 1913

Fanciulli, Pietro Paolo, Caruso, Domenico & Dallai, Romano, 2006, On some Collembola from a Sicily cave, with the description of a new species of Serroderus Delamare, 1948 (Collembola, Cyphoderidae), Journal of Natural History 40 (19 - 20), pp. 1241-1251 : 1242

Genus Acherontiella Absolon, 1913

Acherontiella carusoi Dallai, 1978

Material. Four specimens collected in the largest room of the Monello cave over a guano deposit, they were prepared for scanning electron microscopy.

The genus Acherontiella includes about 21 species all over the world. It has a cosmopolitan distribution with nine palearctic species, three nearctic, one neotropic, four African, one pantropic, two Oriental, and one from New Caledonia ( Thibaud et al. 2004). The Italian fauna includes three species: A. bougisi Cassagnau and Delamare, 1955 , A. cavernicola (Tarsia in Curia, 1941), and A. carusoi Dallai, 1978 . Acherontiella bougisi is widespread in the Mediterranean Basin ( Dallai 1978), in Italy it has been found both in caves and soil samples from Sicily. Acherontiella cavernicola and A. carusoi are indeed cave species so far reported only from Italy: the first from a cave near Iseo (Brescia, northern Italy), while A. carusoi was described by Dallai (1978) from two caves in the same area of the Monello cave ( Caruso and Costa 1978). The new finding of A. carusoi confirms its presence in the area of the original description, and allows the examination of some characters by means of scanning electron microscopy, such as the shape of the tibiotarsus with two knobbed tenent hairs, and claw with subapical tooth ( Figure 1A ), and the presence of a terminal vesicle and four oval sensilla on antennomere IV ( Figure 1B, C ).

Figures

Figure 1. Scanning electron micrographs of Acherontiella carusoi. (A) Tibiotarsus III with knobbed tenent hairs and claw with subapical tooth (arrow); (B) apical part of antennomere IV showing the terminal vesicle (asterisk); (C) antennomere IV with four oval sensilla (arrows).