Mylabris (Mylabris) apiceguttata Pan & Bologna, sp. n.
Creators: name: Pan, Zhao
name: Bologna, Marco A.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Mylabris
Mylabris apiceguttata

description: Mylabris (Mylabris) apiceguttata Pan & Bologna sp. n. *
Figs. 1 C, 6A–G
Mylabris guerini, Mirzayans, 1970: 30 (nec Chevrolat, 1840).
Type locality. “ Iran, Kerman, Birjand”. Birdjand, as wrote on the label, is the Romanized name of Birjand, and represents the capital of the Iranian South Khorasan province, close to the Afghanistan border. This city has a dry continental climate.
Type specimens. Holotype male (HMIM) and 14 male and 4 female paratypes (HMIM, 1 male MAB) with the following labels: “Birdjand, 21.4.65, Safavi; 752” (white, printed and handwritten). One male paratype (HMIM) labelled: “Birdjand, 17.v.49, Mir. Salavatian; 123; Mylabris sp. aff. guerini Chevr., Dr. Z. Kaszab det., 1966” (white, printed and handwritten). Types have the additional label “ Holotypus (and Paratypus, respectively), Mylabris (Myl.) apiceguttata n. sp. Z. Pan & M. Bologna det. 2013 (red, rectangular, printed and handwritten). Holotype has left antenna glumed on a separe label together with genitalia; one paratype as male genitalia and fore and middle legs glumed in a separte label.
Description. Male: body black, but antennomeres III–XI and legs reddish, and elytra yellow with the following black pattern (Fig. 6 B): two separated or fused subrounded spots on basal third, one irregular transverse fascia just after the middle, and one sub-triangular spot on the inner side of apex. Setation uniformly black, but ventral side of foretibiae and foretarsi with golden setae, forming a small pad under the pro- and mesotarsomeres; setation evidently longer ventrally than dorsally; setae denser on head and pronotum, sparser on elytra. Body length: 10.0– 12.5 mm.
Head capsule subquadrate, wider at eyes than at temple; punctures wide, relatively shallow and dense, surface among punctures shagreened, shiny on vertex, wrinkled on frons; temple parallel, not clearly curved posteriorly, subequal in length to the longitudinal length of eye; frons flat, with one middle red spot, more or less divided posteriorly, and posteriorly to red spot slightly depressed; clypeus transverse, convex, with slightly rounded anterior and lateral margins, anteriorly slightly depressed and smooth, fronto-clypeal suture clearly visible; labrum only slightly shorter and narrower than clypeus, anterior margin slightly emarginate, longitudinally depressed in the middle; mandibles robust, almost straight at basal half, curved suddenly in apical third, slightly longer than clypeus and labrum together; maxillary palpomere II with long setae on the posterior side, last maxillary palpomere apically thickened and truncate at apex; antennae (Fig. 6 A) relatively long, slightly extending over the basal margin of pronotum, antennomere I and II black, III–XI reddish, I approximately twice as long as II, which is semiglobular; antennomere III elongate, ca. 1.5 times as long as IV, IV and V similar in length and width, VI similar in length to IV and V but widened apically, VII–IX similar in length but progressively more widened apically, X subcylindrical, XI sub-lanceolate, elongate and narrowed in the last half, ca. twice as long as wide.
Pronotum slightly longer than width, narrowed anteriad, convex, maximum width at middle; with a shallow fore transverse depression and another deeper in the middle of base; basal margin straight, lateral sides more or less evidently bordered; punctures wide and irregular, almost confluent, particulalrly on anterior third, surface among punctures shagreened. Elytral black pattern as in Fig. 6 B; setation shorter and sparser than that on head and pronotum, erect on the anterior third, subrecet and shorter on the remaining surface. Mesosternum longitudinally elevated in the middle, with a clearly modified anterior section (“scutum”), with a slightly depressed oval area with dense and slightly long setae (Fig. 6 C); mesepisterna depressed along the anterior margin, which consequently appears to be raised. Legs dark reddish to black, pro- and mesotibial spurs all similar in shape and pointed, both metatibial spurs stick-like, the inner one more narrowed at apex; femora with mixed short and long setae; setae robust and longer on tibiae and tarsi; foretibiae ventrally with mixed golden and black short and dense setae, setation on external side of foretibiae and foretarsomeres slightly longer than that on inner side; pro- and mesotarsomeres with ventral golden setae forming tarsal pads, those of mesotarsomeres smaller.
Posterior margin of male sternite VIII deeply emarginated in the middle. Male genitalia as Figs. 6 D–G: gonoforceps in lateral view (Fig. 6 E) with basal part slender, and apical lobe relatively short, slightly less than 0.5 the total length of gonoforceps; gonoforceps (Fig. 6 D) fused ventrally in the basal third; aedeagus (Fig. 6 F) with two dorsal hooks both positioned far from apex with same inclination; distal hook almost at apex, the proximal one slightly longer and more curved than distal one, endophallic hook small, relatively straight. The apodeme of the spiculum gastrale slender, as in Fig. 6 G.
Female. Unknown.
Etymology. The name of this species refers to the unusual black spot present on the apical inner margin of elytra.
Taxonomic remarks. Mirzayans (1970) cited this specie as M. guerini, on the basis of the specimens we examined at HMIM, which were previously identified by Kaszab as “ M. aff. guerini ”. Some citations of M. parumpicta from Iran possibly refer to this new species.
This species greatly differs from most Mylabris (Mylabris) species because of the following characters: the shape of the ventral blade of claws is more similar, even if not completely the same, of that of the subgenus Calydabris, in which the ventral blade is shorter and fused at base with the dorsal one, differently than in the nominate subgenus. Also the aedeagal distal hook evidently differs from that of other species. Moreover, Calydabris has in common with the nominate subgenus, the presence of a tuft of setae on the scutum of mesosternum, never pointed out in the literature, which probably caused some taxonomic confusion, and is heterogeneous as concerns the shape of antennae, pronotum and claws. In conclusion, we posited this species refer to the nominate subgenus in this paper, because another species (M. barezensis), which is very similar with this species on above morphological characters, was published in this subgenus by Serri et al. (2012).
Distribution. E Iran.
description: Published as part of Pan, Zhao & Bologna, Marco A., 2014, Taxonomy, Bionomics and Faunistics of the Nominate Subgenus of Mylabris Fabricius, 1775, with the description of five new species (Coleoptera: Meloidae: Mylabrini), pp. 1-78 in Zootaxa 3806 (1) on pages 18-19, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3806.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/286141