Ropalidia mangoflava Polasek 2025, sp. nov.
Creators: name: Polašek, Ozren
name: Onah, Ikechukwu
name: Kehinde, Tope
name: Rojo, Veronica
name: Noort, Simon Van
name: Carpenter, James M.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Vespidae
Ropalidia
Ropalidia mangoflava

description: Ropalidia mangoflava Polašek sp. nov.
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: 4228AB30-24F3-4192-B925-75708DCFF8FA
Type specimens. Holotype: Wumawimbi, Pemba Island, Tanzania, 1♀ (OLM. VA397). The total number of examined specimens: 1♀.
Diagnosis. An endemic species known only from a single specimen from Pemba Island of the Zanzibar archipelago in Tanzania. It is characterized by a lightly ferruginous basal colour and numerous yellow markings in females, black antenna and dark tarsi, with substantial morphological similarities to R. africana (CAMERON) stat. rev.
Description. Females. Wing length 8.9 mm. Colour. Basic colour lightly ferruginous, with extensive yellow markings (Figure 30 aa). Clypeus yellow with bilateral remaining ferruginous patches, inner orbit and interantennal area with large yellow markings. Mandible basally ferruginous, with large yellow area and only remaining ferruginous-dark brown area close to teeth (Figure 30 aa). Gena and tempora yellow, two yellow nicks behind posterior ocelli (Figure 29b). Pronotum predominantly yellow, with dorsal ferruginous patch; mesonotum ferruginous, area lateral to parapsidal furrows yellow (Supplementary Figure 12). Scutellum with two yellow spots, metanotum with merged spots into a line with postero-medial notch (Supplementary Figure 11). Mesopleuron ferruginous with central median apical area and postero-inferior yellow area (Figure 29b). Propodeum with two large yellow areas. All three coxa pairs yellow, all three femora pairs with yellow patches, tibia ferruginous, tarsi distally darkened, terminal tarsal segment black. T1 with extensive yellow colour, T2 with thick posterior band and extension along T2/S2 margin. T3–T4 and S3 with suffused yellow posterior bands, remaining metasomal segments ferruginous. Wings transparent, nervature and stigma brown, apical spot well developed. Scape and pedicel brown from above, remaining segments darkened from above; terminal five segments yellowish underneath, scape yellow from underneath (Supplementary Figure 10).
Head. Clypeus longer than wide, with strongly projecting apex, slightly curved upes and weak but visible oculo-clypeal angle (Figure 30 aa). Clypeus finely punctate basaly, apically punctures turn to poorly defined craters. Frons shallowly punctate, covered by yellowish pubescence and protruding yellowish setae, about as long as ocellus diameter. Gena finely punctate with weak punctures definition; posterior part of gena nearly impunctate. Ocelli strongly acute forwards. Gena about 0.8 times as wide as eye, occipital carina weakly sinuate. Eye setae sparse and short, barely visible. Scape shorter than AF1, AF2 about 1.5 times as long as wide (Supplementary Figure 10).
Mesosoma. Mesosoma covered by yellowish pubescence and protruding setae. Mesosoma weakly punctate; mesonotum with very shallow punctures, metapleuron shiny and almost impunctate, with just occasional poorly defined craters. Scutellum and metanotum largely and shallowly punctate; scutellar median carina well developed, reaches more than three quarters of scutellum length. Metanotum impunctate triangle covers about half of surface. Upper propodeal carina not developed, propodeal excavation covered by very weak striae, inferior propodeal carina weakly developed.
Metasoma. T1 elongated; dorsal and lateral surface almost impunctate (with only occasional, poorly defined puncture), and posterior cluster of large and elongated punctures. Ventral surface of T1 covered by very thin, whitish setae. T1 extends laterally and ventrally encloses entire circumference, completely covering S1 (Figure 101a). T2 short and rounded, almost with no parallel sides. T2 and S2 finely punctate. T2 lamella short, yellowish and semi-transparent.
Males are unknown.
Distribution. Pemba Island, Tanzania.
Etymology. From the Latin adjective flavus -a -um, “yellow”, referring to the numerous bright yellow areas on the body, and the fact that the holotype specimen was collected on a mango tree.
Similar species. R. africana (CAMERON) stat. rev.
Note. The only examined specimen was probably collected soon after hatching; the original yellow colour swiftly changed to whitish-yellow. Therefore, the recent photos after collection are provided in Supplementary material to better show the colour pattern of fresh specimen.
Genetics. Despite conspicuous differences from the closely related R. africana (CAMERON) stat. rev., both COI and 28S DNA suggest a very high molecular resemblance to that species. Furthermore, the diversity of R. africana (CAMERON) stat. rev. is greater than the difference of one of the lineages of R. africana (CAMERON) stat. rev. with R. mangoflava sp. nov. This would suggest that neither COI nor 28S are appropriate for the molecular separation of these species. Consequently, R. mangoflava sp. nov. is classified as a member of the R. africana (CAMERON) stat. rev. BIN (BOLD: ACK 8399). The final summary of the morphologic and genetic data suggest that R. mangoflava sp. nov. is probably undergoing a swift speciation process, probably propelled by the geographic isolation, while retaining genetic similarity to R. africana (CAMERON) stat. rev.
description: Published as part of Polašek, Ozren, Onah, Ikechukwu, Kehinde, Tope, Rojo, Veronica, Noort, Simon Van & Carpenter, James M., 2025, Revision of the mainland African species of the Old World social wasp genus Ropalidia Guérin-Méneville 1831 (Hymenoptera; Vespidae), pp. 1-142 in Zootaxa 5626 (1) on pages 103-104, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5626.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/15325272