Bionoblatta hylaeceps
Creators: name: Polizeli, Leonardo
name: Pinto, Ângelo Parise
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Blattodea
Blaberidae
Bionoblatta
Bionoblatta hylaeceps

description: Bionoblatta hylaeceps (Miranda-Ribeiro, 1936)
Figs 1 A – D, 2 A – C
Parahormetica hylaeceps Miranda-Ribeiro, 1936: 218–219, fig. 2 (description of male holotype from Mariana municipality, Minas Gerais State, Brazil in MNRJ 14250); — Camargo-Andrade (1937: 794, mention); — Princis (1963: 118, catalog); — Rocha e Silva Albuquerque (1964: 4, checklist to Brazil, record to Rio de Janeiro State); — Rocha e Silva Albuquerque (1982: 3, checklist to Rio de Janeiro municipality); — Pellens and Grandcolas (2008: 57, catalog to Brazil); — Lopes et al. (2009: 231, record from Rio de Janeiro State based on Rocha e Silva Albuquerque 1982).
Bion mastrucatus Rehn, 1937: 208, 253–256, 258 (description of male holotype from Serra do Itacolomi [state of Minas Gerais], Brazil in MZSP [probably under loan to ANSP], figs 18, 22, 29, subgenital plate and tip abdomen in ventral view and habitus in dorsal view); — Zompro and Fritzsche (1999: 212, mention). syn. nov.
Bionoblatta mastrucatus (Rehn, 1937): — Rehn (1940: 60, comb. nov.); — Rocha e Silva Albuquerque (1964: 5, record to Minas Gerais); — Polizeli and Pinto (2024: 4, 6, figs 1 d – f, taxonomic notes, photos of tegmina and abdomen of holotype in dorsal view).
Bionoblatta mastrucata (Rehn, 1937): — Gurney (1955: 272, 277, key and remarks about type locality); — Rocha e Silva Albuquerque (1957: 408, key and synonymic list); — Princis (1963: 119, catalog); — Vanschuytbroeck (1969: 5, mention); — Pellens and Grandcolas (2008: 48, catalog to Brazil).
Bionoblatta hylaeceps (Miranda-Ribeiro, 1936): — Polizeli and Pinto (2024: 280, comb. nov.).
Zoobank. —
http://zoobank.org/NomenclaturalActs/ 025457AE-67E6-47D3-87F4-C8D6E3E68093
Type material. —
Parahormetica hylaeceps Holotype (by monotypy): BRAZIL • ♂; Minas Gerais State, Mariana municipality; José Pinto da Fonseca leg.; MNRJ 14,250. Lost in the fire of 2018 (S. F. Lopes, 2021, personal communication; see remarks).
Bion mastrucatus Holotype (by original designation): BRAZIL • ♂; [Minas Gerais State, Mariana municipality], Serra do Itacolomi; Apr. 1919; José Pinto da Fonseca leg.; MZSP 22,074, provisionally in ANSP Type 9,367. Examined by photos (Fig. 1 A – C).
Diagnosis. —
Bionoblatta hylaeceps is a dark and reddish-brown hormeticoid-shape brachypterous blaberid; tegmina largely rounded, reaching the anterior margin of the second abdominal segment and almost touching mesialy, dorsal surface deeply punctuated, coloration dark brown, humeral area reddish-brown; small arolium; dorsal surface of the abdomen densely rugged and with few callosities, coloration dark brown, dull, except for narrow reddish-brown lateral borders. The inner area of the disk and the lateral pale portion of the diskal horseshoe-like process (DHP) of pronotum reddish-orange, as well as the orange-ochre supraanal plate, may help in its identification. Based on the coloration pattern, Bionoblatta hylaeceps resembles the poorly known Bionoblatta punctata (Saussure, 1873), causing misidentification. It is possible to differentiate B. hylaeceps from B. punctata by its large, rounded, oval-like tegmina, largely dark brown with humeral area reddish-brown (tegmina possibly trapezoidal, black colored with brown humeral area in B. punctata); abdomen dark brown, narrowly bordered in reddish-orange dorsally (black in B. punctata) and legs reddish-brown (black in B. punctata).
José Pinto da Fonseca (JPF) and the provenance of the specimens of Bionoblatta — JPF was born in the Mariana municipality in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil in 1896, and soon thereafter his family moved to Lorena in the state of São Paulo (Martins 1982). The day and month of his birth are not clear, as there are two dates in the literature (see Martins 1982, Ide et al. 2005). At the age of 16, he returned to Mariana to study in the humanities, philosophy, and theology course at the Seminário de Mariana. At the institution, he began to dedicate himself to the knowledge of biological sciences, influenced by his mentors in natural sciences (Martins 1982). He collected many animal specimens, including insects, which were first sent to the MNRJ and later to the Museu Paulista (today, called the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, MZSP) where he joined as a traveling naturalist in 1919 (see Martins 1982). Paulo Miranda-Ribeiro described P. hylaeceps based on a male individual deposited in the MNRJ and collected in Mariana municipality by JPF but did not specify the date of collection (Miranda-Ribeiro 1936). Interestingly, Alípio de Miranda-Ribeiro, Paulo’s father, recommended JPF as a traveling naturalist to the director of the Museu Paulista (Martins 1982, Pombal Jr. 2002). We assume that the holotype of P. hylaeceps deposited at the MNRJ was collected before 1919 but after 1912, indicating that it was collected before JPF began sending specimens to the Museu Paulista.
JPF collected the holotype of Bion mastrucatus in 1919 and sent it to the Museu Paulista. This material was deposited in that institution with collection number # 22,074 and recorded in the catalog of the collection with natural history notes that reveal unpublished data about the biology of this species (Fig. 2 A, B). Based on free translation from Portuguese, these notes read as follows: “ These Orthopteros were found by José Pinto da Fonseca in the highlands of the Serra do Itaculumy, about 300 m below the rock known as “ Pedra Menina ” [in the Itacolomi Peak]. They appear just when the sun is very strong [hot days], in such manner that is useless [looking for them] on a cold day. ” In his synopsis on Bionoblatta, Gurney (1955) claimed that this material was in the Museu Paulista (now MZSP); however, the material is currently at ANSP. It is likely that it was not returned to MZSP when borrowed for study by James Abram Garfield Rehn, who spent most of his career at ANSP (Gurney 1965), with the holotype remaining at that institution thereafter.
JPF had a remarkable career. At the end of 1920 s, he was hired as a technical assistant in entomology at the Biological Institute of São Paulo and, during the same period, founded the Adolph Hempel Entomological Collection (Ide et al. 2005) at this institution. He was a pioneer of biological control in Brazil as a result of his studies on the use of the wasp Prorops nasuta Waterson, 1923 in the control of the “ Broca-do-Café ” (coffee berry borer), Hypothenemus hampei (Ferrari, 1867). In 1937, he became a founding member and first president of the Brazilian Society of Entomology (Carrera 1987), and in 1938, he became the chair of the Entomology Section of the Instituto Biológico, a position he held until his retirement in 1966. Over his prolific career, he published hundreds of studies, as compiled in Ide et al. (2005).
Distribution — Bionoblatta hylaeceps (cited as P. hylaeceps) has been recorded in many studies as present in the state of Rio de Janeiro (Rocha e Silva Albuquerque 1964, 1982, Pellens and Grandcolas 2008, Lopes et al. 2009); however, no voucher specimens have been reported in support of these records. Most only replicate the record from the seminal paper by Rocha e Silva Albuquerque (1964). In her paper of 1982, Rocha e Silva Albuquerque (1982) identified which records were based on the literature and which were based on voucher specimens, denoting the record of P. hylaeceps for Rio de Janeiro to be based on the literature. We believe the record of occurrence in Rio de Janeiro is a misinterpretation of the study of Miranda-Ribeiro (1936). Thus, it is suggested that this species be removed from the list of cockroaches recorded in the state of Rio de Janeiro pending evidence of bona fide specimens collected in this state.
As mentioned, the holotype of Bion mastrucatus was collected about 300 m below the rock known as Pedra Menina in the Itacolomi Peak, Mariana. While the holotype of P. hylaeceps was also collected in Mariana, there is no further information about the locality: the specimen and any additional data from the labels or field and collection notebooks were lost during the fire in the MNRJ. However, because P. hylaeceps was collected by the same person, in the same municipality, and around the same times as the Bion mastrucautus holotype, we are convinced it also came from the “ Serra do Itacolomi. ” Thus, we consider B. hylaeceps endemic to the “ Serra do Itacolomi ” [Itacolomi Peak] in Minas Gerais State due to the records of this species being limited to that region.
Itacolomi Peak is located within the Itacolomi State Park protected area, which was created by law no. 4,495 on June 14 th, 1967 and encompasses approximately 7,000 ha between the municipalities of Mariana and Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais 1967). Although we do not know the conservation status of this species, the type locality being within a protected area likely favors the maintenance of the population of this species.
description: Published as part of Polizeli, Leonardo & Pinto, Ângelo Parise, 2025, On the taxonomic status of two giant cockroaches of Bionoblatta (Blattodea, Blaberidae) collected by José Pinto da Fonseca, a founder of the Brazilian Society of Entomology, pp. 31-38 in Journal of Orthoptera Research 34 (1) on pages 31-38, DOI: 10.3897/jor.34.129911