Apteropilo humerofuscus Bartlett, 2009, sp. n.
Creators: name: Bartlett, Justin S.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2009
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Cleridae
Apteropilo
Apteropilo humerofuscus

description: Apteropilo humerofuscus sp. n.
(Figures 1, 6, 14, 17)
Pylusopsis chrysocome (in part), sensu Kolibáċ (2003: 69; figs. 49–51) (incorrect determination).
Type material. Holotype (gender not determined): Queensland: Lamington National Park, 28.155°S 153.139°E, 282m, rainforest, 8–18 Mar. 2007, IBISCA Qld - Plot# IQ–300–B, C.Lambkin, N.Starick, malaise trap, (22016) (QM). Paratypes (23): New South Wales: Acacia Plateau, Jan. 1948 (J.G. Brooks bequest, 1996) (1ɗ, ANIC). Queensland: Bald Mountain Area, via Emu Vale, 3000–4000’, 26–30 Jan.1973, G.B. Monteith (1, UQIC); Lamington National Park, 28.151°S 153.138°E, 260m, rainforest, 8–18 Mar. 2007, IBISCA Qld - Plot# IQ–300–C, C.Lambkin, N.Starick, malaise trap, (22018) (1, QM); Lamington National Park, 28.142°S 153.133°E, 248m, rainforest, 8–18 Mar. 2007, IBISCA Qld - Plot# IQ–300–D, C.Lambkin, N.Starick, malaise trap, (22020) (1, QM); Lamington National Park, 28.204°S 153.129°E, 748m, rainforest, 10–20 Mar. 2007, IBISCA Qld - Plot# IQ–700–D, C.Lambkin, N.Starick, malaise trap, (22036) (1, QM); Lamington National Park, 28.234°S 153.141°E, 904m, rainforest, 12–22 Mar. 2007, IBISCA Qld - Plot# IQ– 900–A, C.Lambkin, N.Starick, malaise trap, (22038) (2, JSBC); Lamington National Park, 28.207°S 153.137°E, 471m, rainforest, 22 Mar.-1 Apr. 2007, Plot # IQ-500-D, G.B. Monteith & R. Menendez, flight intercept trap (22189) (1, QM); Lamington National Park, 28.188°S 153.121°E, rainforest, 20 Feb.-5 Mar. 2009, IBISCA 700A, G.B. Monteith, malaise (4, QM); Lamington National Park, 28.192°S 153.124°E, rainforest, 20 Feb.-5 Mar. 2009, IBISCA 700B, G.B. Monteith, malaise (2, QM); Lamington National Park, 28.193°S 153.128°E, rainforest, 20 Feb.-5 Mar. 2009, IBISCA 700C, G.B. Monteith, malaise (2, QM); National Park [presumably Lamington], Jan. 1928, Nicholson (1, ANIC); Tamborine Mountain, 19 Nov. 1925, H. Hacker (1, QM); Mt Glorious, Feb. 1982, Hiller, malaise trap (1Ψ, QDPC); Mt Glorious National Park, 360m, wet rain forest, 28 Feb.–9 Mar. 1984, L. Masner, MT [malaise trap?] (1ɗ, CMNC); Mt Glorious, 20 Mar. 1978, J. Sedlacek (1, WOPC); Bunya Mountains, 10 Dec. 1925, H. Hacker (1, QM); Nambour, Maroochy Horticultural Research Station, 15–22 Mar. 1985, malaise trap (1, QDPC).
Note: Two specimens (National Park and Acacia Plateau) bear an additional label as follows: “ Pylusopsis chrysocome Elston, 1929, mentioned in: KOLIBÁ Č, J. 2003: Entomologica Basiliensia 25 ”. A rectangle of red card labelled “PLESIOTYPUS” is attached to a male specimen from Acacia Plateau.
Description. Total length: 3.6–4.9 mm.
Head: Cranium black-brown, labrum orange-brown, antennae with scape and pedicel orange, A3–10 blackish, A11 dull white to yellowish; frons and vertex moderately distributed with circular punctation, frons partly smooth medially, genae behind eyes with denser punctation, clypeus mostly smooth; antennae with pedicel shorter than A3, club about as long as combined length of A2–8.
Thorax. Prothorax slightly transverse (length to width ratio = 0.83–0.95:1), disc partly black-brown; tips of lateral tubercles, median part of disc and prosternum brown; disc sunken in centre (giving laterally proximate regions a tuberculate appearance); discal punctation dense in sunken part, more moderately distributed sublaterally; area proximal to sunken part plus most of basal third smooth; paralateral and discal seta-bearing pits conspicuously larger than other punctation (Fig. 1). Pterothoracic sterna reddish-brown; elytra (length to width ratio = 1.64–2:1) bright orange, basal quarter with a sub-basal transverse black to fuscous band (not completely covering extreme base and shoulders), basal second quarter of each elytron with a conspicuous globular callositous deposit which curves posteriorly away from suture towards lateral margin; basal punctation large and deep, striae have appearance of being displaced by callositous deposits. Legs: basal half of femora yellowish to white, tibiae and rest of femora black-brown to brown (anterior face sometimes paler than posterior face), tarsi orange-brown.
Abdomen: Ventrites orange-brown. Males: tegmen as in Fig. 14; phallus not discernibly different from that of A. raldae sp. n. (see Fig. 15).
Vestiture: Head and pronotum similarly vested with long erect black setae, and short semi-decumbent orange setae which sometimes forms small tuft-like clusters; elytral disc posterior of black band sparsely distributed with long erect orange setae and more densely with short orange setae; humeral tubercle with tuft of black setae.
Remarks. Kolibáč (2003: figs. 49–51, photo 13) illustrated the tegmen, phallus and spicular fork of a male from Acacia Plateau, and provided a black and white habitus image of another specimen, under the misconception that the material at hand represented P. chrysocome.
Apteropilo humerofuscus sp. n. can be distinguished from A. raldae sp. n. by the darker colouration of the head and pronotum, the absence of a post-basal/sub-lateral callositous spot on the elytra, the presence of a transverse fuscus band across the humeri, and more subtly by its slightly larger and less compact elytral punctation.
A paratype specimen from Maroochydore, Queensland, has the head and pronotum entirely brown and the dark sub-basal elytral band interrupted before the shoulders. The exact shape of the callositous deposits with the basal half of the elytra is subtly inconsistent over the entire species range; this appears to influence the precise distribution of elytral punctation.
Etymology. The specific epithet, humerofuscus (from Latin humerus = shoulder, and fuscus = dark or dusky), is in reference to the transverse black to fuscus band spanning the humeral region of the elytra.
Biology. Adults have been collected from November to March. Many specimens were collected with malaise traps in montane rainforest environments. Like Apteropilo raldae sp. n., A. humerofuscus sp. n. bears an extraordinary, potentially mimetic, resemblance to anthicid beetles of the genus Lemodinus.
Note: A. humerofuscus sp. n. and A. raldae sp. n. appear to be the two most recently evolved Apteropilo species due to their having very similarly structured male terminalia. The decision to describe them as separate species is due in part to their apparent geographic isolation and to the unique morphological characteristics consistent to each isolated population. Selection for the obvious morphological differences of these Apteropilo species may have been influenced by consequential prey avoidance due to resembling at least two morphologically and geographically distinct (presumably chemically defended; see Werner and Chandler 1995) species of Lemodinus within the original distributional range of the ancestral species.
description: Published as part of Bartlett, Justin S., 2009, Taxonomic revision of Apteropilo Lea, 1908 (Coleoptera: Cleridae), pp. 41-53 in Zootaxa 2200 on pages 47-49, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.189616