Pulvinaria araliae Shinji 1935
Creators: name: Tanaka, Hirotaka
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hemiptera
Coccidae
Pulvinaria
Pulvinaria araliae

description: Pulvinaria araliae Shinji, 1935
(Fig. 1)
Pulvinaria araliae Shinji, 1935: 771; Ben-Dov, 1993: 250.
Material examined. Neotype (here designated) JAPAN: Iwate Prefecture, Morioka, Kouma, on Eleutherococcus spinosus, 13.v.2003, coll. H. Tanaka, 1 adult female (EUMJ).
Redescription. Live appearance: adult female elongate oval, fairly flat. Dorsum greenish yellow to green, with no visible wax before oviposition period.
Slide-mounted adult female (n=1): body elongate oval, about 2.7 mm long and 2.0 mm wide, margin with shallow indentation at each stigmatic cleft; anal cleft about 1/5–1/6 body length.
Dorsum. Derm membranous, dermal areolations lacking. Dorsal setae spiniform, frequent, scattered over entire dorsum, each 7–11 µm long with a well-developed basal socket. Preopercular pores oval to circular, small, each about 2–4 µm wide, 45 distributed in a longitudinal band anterior to anal plates. Dorsal tubular ducts and microducts frequent throughout. Dorsal tubercles absent.Anal plates together quadrate, each plate 162–164 µm long, 72–74 µm wide, with a well-developed supporting bar, posterolateral margin slightly convex, and 4 apical setae. Ano-genital fold with 2 pairs of setae along anterior margin and 2 pairs laterally. Anal ring bearing 6 setae. Eyespots present near margin.
Margin. Marginal setae each with a well-developed basal socket and simple pointed apex, 20–64 µm long, each side with 13–14 setae present between anterior and posterior stigmatic clefts. Stigmatic clefts shallow, each with 3 stigmatic spines, median spine longest, 84–89 µm long, about 2–4 times as long as a lateral spine.
Venter. Derm membranous. Multilocular pores each about 5–8 µm wide, with 5–8 loculi (mostly 7) present around genital opening and on medial areas of all abdominal segments; a small group also present lateral to each meso- and metacoxa. Spiracular pores each 3–5 µm wide, with mainly 5 loculi, present in rather broad bands (3–7 pores wide) between margin and each spiracle; anterior bands each containing about 70 pores, posterior bands each with about 80 pores. Microducts scattered throughout venter, but most frequent on outer submarginal area. Tubular ducts of 3 types: type I with a large outer ductule and a stout inner ductule ending with a well-developed flowershaped terminal gland, present in posterior medial area of head, medial area of all thoracic segments and anterior abdominal segments and also in inner submarginal area extending from region near anterior abdominal segments to prothoracic segments; type II tubular ducts each with a rather small outer ductule and a shallow cup-shaped invagination, leading to a narrower inner ductule with a well-developed terminal gland, mostly distributed in medial area of posterior abdominal segments and inner submarginal area of abdominal segments; and type III ducts similar to type II but with a short filamentous inner ductule and a very small terminal gland, present in submarginal band and forming a complete submarginal ring, including anterior to antennae, and intermixing with type I and type II ducts in inner submarginal area. All abdominal and thoracic segments each with 1 (occasionally 2) pair of long ventral setae, present on medial area. With approximately 5 pairs of long setae present between antennae; other setae short and fine, distributed over entire venter. Spiracles normal; peritreme widths: anterior 64–69 µm, posterior 79–81 µm. Legs well developed, each with a completely articulated tibio-tarsal joint and an articulatory sclerosis; claw without a denticle; both claw digitules rather broad and slightly shorter than thin tarsal digitules. Hind trochanter + femur 376–382 µm long, hind tibia 249–258 µm long, and hind tarsus 119–124 µm long. Antennae 8 segmented, each 509–517 µm long. Labium about 70 µm long, 110 µm wide.
Host plants. Araliaceae: Aralia chinensis (Shinji 1935) and Eleutherococcus spinosus (Shinji 1935, as Acanthopanax spinosum).
Distribution. Japan: Iwate Prefecture (Shinji 1935).
Remarks. Pulvinaria araliae resembles P. nipponica Lindinger, 1933, P. kuwacola Kuwana, 1907, and P. photiniae Kuwana, 1914, in the distribution of type III ventral tubular ducts, the number of loculi in the multilocular pores, and in lacking dorsal tubercles. However, it can be easily distinguished from the above species in having well-developed ventral setae on all the thoracic and abdominal segments, and in lacking dermal areolations on the dorsum. Important diagnostic morphological character states of this species and a comparison between them and those of the type species of the genus, P. vitis (Linnaeus, 1758), are summarized in Table 1.
The author of this species, Dr. Orihei Shinji (1885–1951) is known as a problematic taxonomist in Japan and it is thought that at least some of his descriptions are unreliable (Aoki 1996). Furthermore, the original description of P. araliae was based on highly variable morphological characters (e.g. live appearance, proportions of the lengths of antennal segments, body length, and ovisac length) that have little taxonomic value. The type specimens of P. araliae have been reported as lost (Ben-Dov 1993) and the author has searched for type specimens of this species for over 10 years in most of the Coccomorpha collections in Japan, but none could be found. It is concluded that all of Dr. Shinji’s type specimens of Pulvinaria spp. have been lost. Therefore, the specimen of P. araliae described here was identified based only on the identity of the host plant (Eleutherococcus spinosus) and the type locality (Iwate Prefecture, Japan). No other Pulvinaria species are known from Eleutherococcus spinosus (García Morales et al. 2016) and the specimen’s morphology is different from all other known Japanese species of Pulvinaria. The author believes that designation of a neotype of this species is necessary because the original description of the species is not informative and its type material has been lost. The specimen used in the redescription above is here designated as the neotype of P. araliae for the purpose of taxonomic stability. Shinji (1935) wrote that the body of the adult female of P. araliae was subspherical and young adult females (or nymphs) showed as numerous black spots. The neotype specimen was flat and did not show any black spots on the surface; however, its microscopic morphology is consistent with the original description. These discrepancies may be due to differences in the age of the specimens; the specimen collected by Shinji (1935) was probably a fully grown old gravid female.
description: Published as part of Tanaka, Hirotaka, 2020, Redescriptions of three species of Pulvinaria (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha: Coccidae) in Japan, pp. 131-141 in Zootaxa 4779 (1) on pages 132-134, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4779.1.10, http://zenodo.org/record/3831652