Sinobathyscia tianma Wang & Perreau & Růžička & Song 2017, sp. nov.
Creators: name: Wang, Cheng-Bin
name: Perreau, Michel
name: Růžička, Jan
name: Song, Xiao-Bin
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2017
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Leiodidae
Sinobathyscia
Sinobathyscia tianma

description: Sinobathyscia tianma sp. nov. (天马ĢḆṁṂffl)
(Figs. 1 A–D; 2A–B, D–L; 3A–B, D– G, I–J; 4A–D, G–J, L; 5A–H; 6C–D, E; 7A–C)
Type material. Holotype: ♂, CHINA, Shanghai: / Songjiang District, / Tianmashan (天 马山), / alt. 40 m, 31°04'35.95''N / 121°08'45.45''E, // sifted from rotten wood, / 19.XII.2016, / Xiao-Bin Song leg. (SNUC).
Paratypes: 1♂ 8♀♀, same data as holotype (1♂ 5♀♀ in SNUC, 1♀ in CJRZ, 1♀ in CMPR and 1♀ in BMNH). Description. Male holotype. Extended body length: 1.4 mm. Length (mm) of different body parts: head (0.2): antenna (0.5): pronotum (0.4): elytra (0.7); width (mm): head (0.3): pronotum (0.7): elytra (0.7). Proportion of antennomeres from base to tip in µm (length × width): 49 × 32, 58 × 34, 28 × 24, 20 × 22, 22 × 24, 22 × 27, 33 × 38, 15 × 35, 26 × 47, 30 × 54, 71 × 54.
Habitus (Figs. 1 A–D) oval, much convex and sublustrous. Moderately pigmented: mostly brown; mouthparts, antennae and tarsi somewhat paler. Dorsum continuously clothed with fine, prostrate, yellowish pubescence. Insertions of pubescence on dorsal surfaces of elytra and femora aligned along superficial transverse striolations; interspace between two striolations microreticulate. Dorsal surfaces of head and pronotum finely and sparsely punctate, not transversely striolated; interspace microreticulate.
Head retractile, width/length = 1.4. Clypeus subtrapezoidal, front margin straight. Antennae (Fig. 2 A) slender and incompact, AL/HW = 1.4; antennomere I and II wide, about 1.4 times wider than antennomere III; antennomere VIII transverse, wider than twice of its length; antennomere IX and X nearly twice as wide as long; antennomere XI pear-like, length/width = 1.30.
Pronotum (Fig. 3 A) transverse, widest at base, width/length = 1.7. Sides gently arched, gradually narrowing from posterior to anterior; hind angles projected backwards and bluntly rounded. Posterior margin emarginate near hind angles.
Elytra oval, tightly combined with each other but can be separated using some force, as wide as long and widest at base. Sides evenly arched, gradually narrowing from bases to apices; apices (Fig. 3 F) almost obliquely truncated.
Abdominal ventrite VIII (Fig. 4 H) transverse, almost not emarginate on posterior margin, and a subrounded median patch strongly sclerotized posteriorly. Genital segment (Fig. 4 I) longer than wide, with spiculum gastrale poorly sclerotized, ill-defined; genital plate quite narrow; tergite IX rounded ventro-apically.
Prolegs (Fig. 4 A) short but strong, with protarsi pentamerous, basal three protarsomeres (Fig. 4 B) strongly expanded: (tibial width)/(basitarsal width) = 1.1. Protibiae strongly expanded towards apex. Profemora broad. Mesotibiae with inner side inconspicuously bisinuate, outer side with several big spines erecting from pubescence. Metatibiae straight, outer side with several small spines hidden in pubescence.
Aedeagus (Fig. 5 A) with median lobe slender, gradually narrowing apically and terminated to a lanceolate apex (Fig. 5 C) in dorsal view; parameres thick, gently convergent inwards, slightly expanded before apex and narrowly subrounded at apex, reaching the apex level of median lobe; two strong apical setae inserted on inner side, the posterior one distinctly longer and stronger than the anterior one, their arrangements as shown in Figs. 5 E–H; basal lamella short. In lateral view (Fig. 5 B), median lobe regularly bent ventrad and acuminate at apex (Fig. 5 D); parameres with a rounded knob at apex (Fig. 5 H). Endophallus with two obvious bands of phanerae, a pair of small sclerites in the middle region and a U-shaped complex in the basal region.
Female. Similar to male in general appearance (Figs. 1 C–D), including elytral apices (Fig. 3 G), but distinct in the following characters: pronotum (Fig. 3 B) with hind angles narrower; protarsi (Fig. 4 D) tetramerous and simply linear; protibiae (Fig. 4 C) considerably narrower; ventrite VIII (Figs. 4 J, L) generally rounded at posterior edge, only slightly protruded in the median, spiculum ventrale quite narrow, nearly parallel-sided; tergite IX (Fig. 6 C) widely rounded at posterior edge, with four minute setae posteriorly; valvifer with one lateral seta; coxite (Figs. 6 C–D) with two subapical and two lateral setae; stylus minute (Figs. 6 C–D), cylindrical, with one long seta; spermatheca (Fig. 6 E) large, trilobed, and the middle one the largest.
Field observations. Specimens were found in an abandoned termite nest in rotten wood (Fig. 7 A–C), located near a regular latrine site of Meles meles (Linnaeus, 1758) (Mustelidae) or Nyctereutes procyonoides Gray, 1834 (Canidae).
Distribution. China (Shanghai) (Fig. 8).
Etymology. The specific epithet is from the Chinese name (Pinyin) of the type locality “Tianmashan”, which means “flying horse”.
Diagnosis. This new species is similar to Sinobathyscia kurbatovi from Wuhan, Hubei, but with stable differences on the spiculum ventrale of female ventrite VIII, the most important character for identifying females of Cholevinae: in S. tianma sp. nov., the spiculum ventrale is narrow (Figs. 4 J, L); while in S. kurbatovi, the spiculum ventrale is much wider, about 1.4 times as wide as in the new species (Figs. 4 K, M).
description: Published as part of Wang, Cheng-Bin, Perreau, Michel, Růžička, Jan & Song, Xiao-Bin, 2017, Revision of the genus Sinobathyscia Perreau (Coleoptera, Leiodidae, Cholevinae) from China, with description of a new species, pp. 350-360 in Zootaxa 4303 (3) on pages 353-354, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4303.3.2, http://zenodo.org/record/841405