Alloraphes myrmecophilus Franz
Creators: name: Jałoszyński, Paweł
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2013
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Staphylinidae
Alloraphes
Alloraphes myrmecophilus

description: Alloraphes myrmecophilus Franz stat. rest.
(Figs. 11, 25, 42–43, 59–60, 66, 68)
Alloraphes myrmecophilus Franz, 1980a: 214, Fig. 201.
Parastenichnaphes myrmecophilus (Franz); Franz, 1989: 278.
Type material. Paratypes (15 exx: 12 ♂, 3 ♀): Brazil (São Paulo): all with two labels (Fig. 66): "Barueri, Sao Paulo / Brasil, lg. Lenko" with numbers 22, 23 or 27 on reverse sides [white, printed; reverse handwritten in blue ink]; " Alloraphes / myrmecophilus m. / PARATYPUS " [yellow, handwritten and printed] (NHMW).
Revised diagnosis. Male and female: frons shallowly impressed between supraantennal tubercles and sharply demarcated from convex vertex by broadly V-shaped and narrow transverse groove between eyes; pronotum with nearly evenly arcuate ante-basal transverse groove indistinctly deepened in middle; elytra unmodified. Male: aedeagus in ventral view strikingly stout, with distinctly asymmetrical apex of median lobe, without apical projections; each slender paramere bearing single long and thin seta.
Redescription. Body of male (Fig. 11) moderately strongly convex, brown, covered with light brown vestiture; BL 0.90–0.96 mm.
Head broadest at large, moderately strongly convex and moderately coarsely faceted eyes, HL 0.10–0.13 mm (mean 0.69 mm), HW 0.14–015 mm (mean 0.15 mm); tempora absent, eyes adjacent to occipital constriction; vertex distinctly convex, sharply demarcated from frons by narrow and long broadly V-shaped transverse groove (tip directed anteriorly); frons between weakly raised supra-antennal tubercles slightly impressed. Punctures on frons and vertex inconspicuous, fine; setae short, barely discernible. Antennae slender, AnL 25– 0.28 mm (mean 0.27 mm); antennomere I about 1.5x as long as broad; II about twice as long as broad; III–V about as long as broad; VI–VII each slightly transverse; VIII–X each distinctly transverse; XI only about 1.3x as long as broad and about 1.8x as long as X.
Pronotum about as long as broad, broadest in anterior third; PL 0.16–0.20 mm (mean 0.18 mm), PW 0.16–0.19 mm (mean 0.18 mm). Anterior margin and lateral margins in anterior half strongly rounded; sides distinctly narrowing caudad, pronotum distinctly constricted near posterior fourth; posterior margin slightly arcuate; antebasal transverse groove distinct and weakly, evenly arcuate, indistinctly deepened in middle; lateral impressions small and shallow, indistinct. Punctures on pronotal disc inconspicuous, fine and sparse; setae sparse, short and nearly recumbent, sides of pronotum covered sparsely with short and relatively thin bristles directed latero-caudad (indiscernible in dry-mounted specimens but visible in transparent mounts under a compound microscope).
Elytra more convex than pronotum, oval and unmodified, broadest between middle and anterior third; EL 0.38–0.43 mm (mean 0.40 mm), EW 0.28–0.30 mm (mean 0.28 mm), EI 1.36–1.45 (mean 1.42); sub-humeral lines barely discernible at elytral bases, short and indistinct. Punctures on elytra only slightly more distinct than those on pronotum, small and shallow; setae short, sparse and nearly recumbent. Hind wings well developed.
Legs long and slender; all tibiae straight.
Aedeagus (Figs. 42–43, 59–60) stout and lightly sclerotized; AeL 0.13 mm; in ventral view apical part of median lobe distinctly asymmetrical and with deeply and irregularly emarginated apical margin; apical projections missing; parameres slender and each with only one thin and long apical seta.
Female. Externally indiscernible from male. BL 0.73–0.74 mm; HL 0.13–0.14 mm, HW 0.14–0.15 mm, AnL 0.25 mm; PL 0.18 mm, PW 0.18 mm; EL 0.43 mm, EW 0.29–0.30 mm, EI 1.42–1.48.
Distribution. Southern Brazil (Fig. 68 h).
Remarks. This remarkably small and slender species has strikingly stout aedeagus that differs from typically elongate and slender genitalia of all remaining congeners. However, details of morphology studied in a transparent mount (Fig. 25) do not differ from those of the type species of Alloraphes, and the aedeagus differs only in the general shape, and not in important characters, as the free parameres, basal foramen distant from base of median lobe, basally located lentiform sclerotization and the asymmetrical apex of median lobe. Franz (1980a) originally placed this species in Alloraphes, but later (Franz 1989) transferred it to Parastenichnaphes. It is unclear why he did so, as his Parastenichnaphes was defined on the basis of the aedeagus without parameres, in contrast to Alloraphes having the parameres (the identification key in Franz (1989)). In the original description Franz (1980a) illustrated the aedeagus of A. myrmecophilus with distinct parameres, and this observation was confirmed during the present study. Therefore, the original status of A. myrmecophilus is restituted.
Franz (1980a) gives additional collecting data for the type series of A. myrmecophilus: in nests of Camponotus rufipes.
Species inquirendae
Alloraphes bolivarensis Franz
Alloraphes bolivarensis Franz, 1988: 80, Fig. 24.
This species is known from a single male collected in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela (Fig. 68 i). According to Franz (1988), the holotype was deposited in his collection (currently housed at NHMW). The entire Franz Collection was surveyed by the author in 2004, and A. bolivarensis was not found; repeated search by the NHMW curator Harald Schillhammer in 2013 was also unsuccessful (email from H. Schillhammer dated 9 Sept. 2013). However, cases of labeling type specimens with a different name than the subsequently published one are not infrequent in the Franz Collection (Jałoszyński, pers. obs.) and it is still possible that the holotype of A. bolivarensis can be found in future. Since the description and illustrations presented by Franz (1988) are insufficiently detailed to unambiguously identify this species, it must remain a species inquirenda.
Franz (1988) mentioned that the elytral apices of A. bolivarensis are protruding posteriorly, which may resemble modifications seen in A. jamaicae or A. yucatani. The aedeagus illustrated in latero-ventral view (Franz 1988: Fig. 24) and without any internal details has unusually elongate and slender apical part of the median lobe, dissimilar to those of A. jamaicae and A. yucatani, but somehow resembling the aedeagus of A. peckorum. The parameres of A. bolivarensis were illustrated as slender, barely broadened distally and much shorter than the median lobe; if this character is correct than no other Alloraphes has such parameres.
description: Published as part of Jałoszyński, Paweł, 2013, Revision of the Neotropical genus Alloraphes Franz (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Scydmaeninae), pp. 549-568 in Zootaxa 3750 (5) on pages 566-567, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3750.5.7, http://zenodo.org/record/217852