Propylea luteopustulata
Creators: name: POORANI, J.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Coccinellidae
Propylea
Propylea luteopustulata

description: Propylea luteopustulata (Mulsant)
(Figs 176–179)
Oenopia (Pania) luteopustulata Mulsant, 1850: 421 (Holotype, OUM; Type locality: Assam, India).
Pania luteopustulata: Iablokoff-Khnzorian 1979: 58; 1982: 132.
Coelophora luteopustulata: Crotch 1874: 156; Sicard 1913: 500.
Oenopia luteopustulata: Korschefsky 1932: 288; Miyatake 1967: 77.
Propylea luteopustulata: Vandenberg & Gordon 1991: 30; Poorani 2002a: 340.
Oenopia luteopustulata a. thibetina: Mader 1926 (1935): 340.
Oenopia luteopustulata var. thibetina: Kapur 1958: 329.
Oenopia pracuae Weise, 1891: 286.
Oenopia luteopustulata a. pracui: Mader 1926 (1935): 340.
Oenopia luteopustulata a. pracuae: Kapur 1958: 329.
Coelophora pedicata Mulsant, 1853a: 180.
Oenopia luteopustulata var. subpedicata Kapur, 1958: 333.
Diagnosis. Length: 4.20–5.16 mm; width: 3.54–4.35 mm. Form (Fig. 176a) broad oval to slightly elongate oval, dorsum moderately convex and glabrous. Ground colour red to orange yellow, with black markings on head, pronotum and elytra. Head yellow, with a transverse black marking in posterior half. Pronotum with a transverse black band along posterior margin, rarely with four black spots. Elytral pattern highly variable (Fig. 178c–n); with an anchor-shaped black marking (Fig. 177a) very similar to that in P. dissecta in various states of reduction (Fig. 178c–f, m, n) / with broken lines (Fig. 176a) / with 10–11 elytral spots (Fig. 178g –l) / with immaculate elytra (Fig. 177b). Male genitalia (Fig. 176b–e) and spermatheca (Fig. 177c, d) as illustrated.
Immature stages. Life stages (Figs 178a, b; 179) as illustrated.
Distribution. India: Widely distributed in the northern and northeastern regions and the Himalayas (Andaman Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal); Nepal; Bhutan; Pakistan; Myanmar; China; Thailand; Tibet; Taiwan; Vietnam.
Prey/associated habitat. Hemiptera: Aphidoidea: Adelges spp., Aphis fabae Scopoli, Aphis craccivora Koch, Aphis gossypii Glover, Brachycaudus helichrysi (Kaltenbach), Brevicoryne brassicae (L.), Capitophorus formosartemisiae (Takahashi), Eriosoma lanigerum (Hausmann), Hyalopterus pruni (Geoffroy), Lipaphis pseudobrassicae (Kaltenbach), Macrosiphoniella sanborni (Gillette), Macrosiphum rosae (Linnaeus), Myzus persicae (Sulzer), Pineus sp., Rhopalosiphum maidis (Fitch), Sitobion rosaeiformis (Das), and Tuberculatus indicus Ghosh. Associated with adelgids feeding on silver fir and pine; indeterminate aphids on Artemisia sp., Spiraea sp. (label data). Found feeding on aphids infesting Galinsoga parviflora and Bidens pilosa along with P. luteopustulata (Sajan et al. 2019).
Seasonal occurrence. Active during February–June; collected during September–December.
Notes. This is the most common species of Propylea along with P. dissecta in the northeastern region of India and is highly variable. See Vandenberg & Gordon (1991) and Kovář (2007) for extralimital synonyms not listed here. See Kapur (1958), Bielawski (1972), Vandenberg & Gordon (1991), Ren et al. (2009) and Yu (2010) for more illustrations of elytral pattern variations and genitalia and list of synonyms.
description: Published as part of POORANI, J., 2023, An illustrated guide to lady beetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) of the Indian Subcontinent. Part 1. Tribe Coccinellini, pp. 1-307 in Zootaxa 5332 (1) on pages 245-251, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5332.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/8261502