Giraffaphaenops brevicephalus Ma & Huang & Tian 2020, n. sp.
Creators: name: Ma, Zijun
name: Huang, Sunbin
name: Tian, Mingyi
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Carabidae
Giraffaphaenops
Giraffaphaenops brevicephalus

description: Giraffaphaenops brevicephalus n. sp.
(Figs. 7–12)
Material. Holotype male, cave Dalongguan Dong, Dalongguan Tun, Jialong Cun, Gantian Zhen, Leye Xian, Baise Shi, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, 24°34'23.46"N, 106°25'27.96"E, 1238 m in altitude, 15-V-2020, leg. Chenghai Fu, deposited in SCAU. Paratypes: 1 male & 1 female; same data as holotype; deposited in SCAU; 1 male & 2 females, same locality, 29-VI-2020, leg. Mingyi Tian, deposited in SCAU.
Description. Length: 8.56–8.90 mm including mandibles, or 7.94–8.4 mm excluding mandibles; width: 1.33– 1.69 mm; fore body, head (excluding mandibles) plus pronotum, distinctly longer than elytra. Habitus as in Fig. 7.
Body yellowish brown to reddish brown, elytra slightly lighter, palps, antennae and tarsi pale; shiny, wholly pubescent including appendages, covered with short and erected setae, except propleura, mesosternum and epipleura, which are glabrous.
Head elongate, nearly triangular in form, widest at 2/5 from the base (including mandibles), a little behind the level of antennal articulation, temples slightly and gradually narrowed posteriad towards the distinct neck constriction, base semicolumn-shaped, constriction about 2/5 as wide as head; head excluding mandibles distinctly shorter than pronotum, but as long as pronotum including mandibles; frontal furrows short but distinct, nearly parallel-sided though slightly divergent posteriorly; only anterior pair of supraorbital pores present, at about the widest level; a pair of suborbital pores present, close to the base of head; clypeus transverse, 6-setose; labrum transverse, distinctly protruded medially, 6-setose; mandibles thin and elongated, right one faintly bidentate; palps thin and very elongated, penultimate palpomeres much longer than the apical ones (1.3 times); the 2 nd labial palpomere bisetose on inner margin, with two additional short setae on outer margin, one at middle and the other at subapex; mentum and submentum completely fused; mentum widely concave basally, mental tooth bifid, with two setae on each side; submentum 13-setose (Fig. 8A); antennae filiform, extraordinary long and slender, 10 th and 11 th antennomeres exceeding over elytral apices; 1 st antennomere stout, 2.7 times as long as wide; 1 st subequal to 2 nd in length, about a third as long as 3 rd which is subequal in length to 4 th and 5 th respectively; length of antennomeres gradually shortened from 6 th to 10 th, and 7 th as long as the 11 th. The comparative length ratio of antennomere as follows: 1 st (1.00), 2 nd (1.17), 3 rd (3.17), 4 th (3.25), 5 th (3.08), 6 th (2.92), 7 th (2.67), 8 th (2.25), 9 th (2.08), 10 th (1.83) and 11 th (2.58).
Prothorax extremely elongate, nearly as long as head including mandibles, PrL/HL=0.91–1.02; fore half rodlike prolonged, evenly widened, hind half form oval-like; propleura strongly tumid, making widest at about basal fourth; pronotum narrow and markedly elongate, nearly parallel-sided throughout, basal part distinctly widened; base much wider than front, PbW/PfW=1.39–1.45; pronotum much narrower than prothorax, PtW/PnW=1.33–1.48, and narrower than head, HW/PnW=1.23–1.33, without lateral-marginal setae.
Elytra similar to G. clarkei Deuve, 2002 and G. yangi Tian & Luo, 2015 (Fig. 9) elongate-ovate, about twice as wide as prothorax, much longer than pronotum, EW/PnW=2.21–3.07; widest at about 3/5 from base, strongly convex, but basal part nearly flat, shoulders not well marked; discal setiferous pores absent, preapical pore present, seta short and indistinct; chaetotaxal pattern of the marginal umbilicate pores similar to that of G. clarkei and G. yangi, but the 2 nd pore obviously more closer to 3 rd than to 1 st, preapical pore 1.5 times closer to suture than to margin; scutellum small, scutellar pore present.
Legs slender and long, hind femora shorter than elytra; fore tarsomeres not modified in male; the 1 st tarsomere almost as long as 2 nd– 4 th combined in fore legs, while distinctly longer in middle and hind legs, respectively.
Ventrite IV–VI each with a pair of paramedian setae, VII bearing a pair of marginal setae in male, while two pairs in female.
Male genitalia (Fig. 10): median lobe of aedeagus very similar to that of G. yangi, slender and arcuate, basal orifice large, but apex slightly broader and more blunt, not distinctly constrict (Fig. 10A); sagittal aileron small, nearly rounded and semitransparent; inner sac weakly marked, armed with a broad copulatory piece which is about 2/7 as long as the median lobe; in dorsal view, apical lobe slenderer, rounded at apex (Fig. 10B); parameres similar to those of G. yangi, the right bearing three long setae at apex, while the left only two; genital ring wide (Fig. 10C).
Remarks: G. brevicephalus n. sp. is very similar in prothorax and elytra shape to G. clarkei and G. yangi, but it is easily separated from them by its shorter and broader head (Fig. 8A), versus longer and narrower in the latter two species (Fig. 8B).
Etymology: “brevi-”+“cephalus”, to indicate its short head of this new species.
Distribution: China (Guangxi). Known only from the cave Dalongguan Dong (Fig. 11). This cave is very close to the village Dalongguan. With a very small and narrow entrance (Fig. 12A), then the passage becomes much wider. It is about two hundred meters long before joining an underground river. All of the beetles were discovered and collected in a wet area about four to five dozen meters from the entrance (Fig. 12 B, C).
description: Published as part of Ma, Zijun, Huang, Sunbin & Tian, Mingyi, 2020, Two new species of cavernicolous trechines from central Guizhou and northwestern Guangxi, China (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Trechinae), pp. 581-593 in Zootaxa 4861 (4) on pages 587-591, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4861.4.6, http://zenodo.org/record/4416789