Oromia hephaestos Alonso Zarazaga, 1987

Machado, Antonio & López, Heriberto, 2015, A new species of Oromia (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) from the Canary Islands, Zootaxa 3931 (1), pp. 117-126 : 124

Oromia hephaestos Alonso Zarazaga, 1987

Studied material. Tenerife, Cueva de Felipe Reventón (720 m a.s.l., UTM 28R3329-31371): 1 ♂ (Holotype), 17- III-1984, J.L. Martín leg. ( DZUL 7560); 1♀ (Paratypus), 23-III-1986, J.J. Hernández leg. ( DZUL 7561); 1♀, 14- V-1992, P. Oromí leg.; 1ex. (remains), 09-VII-2000, GIET leg., FR-C/CO-3349 ( DZUL 8067). Cueva del Sobrado (730 m a.s.l., UTM 28R3333-31366), 2exx, 27-IV-2008, H. López leg. ( DZUL 8066, 8065); 1ex (remains), 14-IV- 2014, S. de la Cruz leg.

Biology and ecology. Despite intense sampling of caves and MSS over decades in Tenerife, all known specimens of O. hephaestos have been collected in Cueva del Viento-Sobrado, the largest lava tube in the European Union. Some individuals of this blind weevil have been recently collected in Cueva del Sobrado, on the cave floor under a large crack of the ceiling through which roots emerge and the clay from the overlying soil percolates. This seem to confirm that this species is a radicicolous edaphobiont which appears in caves accidentally, or in transit during its movements among the subterranean soil layers, such as Alonso-Zarazaga (1987) suggests. The specimens collected over last two decades are more variable in body size than those used for the description of the species, so the total length now varies from 2.80–3.56 mm (s.r.) and the maximum width of elytra from 1.16–1.44 mm.