Platymetopus rugosus
Creators: name: Kataev, Boris M.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Carabidae
Platymetopus
Platymetopus rugosus

description: Platymetopus rugosus (Nietner, 1857)
(Figs. 43–45, 48–51, 59, 60, 66)
Harpalus (Ophonus) rugosus Nietner, 1857: 373. Type locality: “about Colombo”, Sri Lanka.
Type material examined. Syntypes: 1 female, with labels “Ceylon, Nietn. ”, “3491”, “ Platymetopus rugosus Ntn. ”, and “ Hist. -Coll. (Coleoptera), Nr. 3491 Platymetopus spec., Ceylan, Nietner, Zool. Mus. Berlin” (MFNB); 1 male, 1 female, with labels “3491”, and “ Hist.-Coll. (Coleoptera), Nr. 3491 Platymetopus spec., Ceylan, Nietner, Zool. Mus. Berlin” (MFNB); 1 female (?), with labels “Ceylon, Mus. Colombo ”, “61932”, “ Dioryche rugosa Nietner ”, and “Hist.-Coll. (Coleoptera), Nr. 61932, Dioryche rugosa Nietner, Colombo, Zool. Mus. Berlin” (MFNB); 1 male, with labels “Ceylon, Nietner s”, “ Dioryche rugosa Nietn. x”, “128”, “ Platymetopus rugosus Nietn., H.E. Andrewes det.”, “ Inst. Zool. P.A.N. Warszawa, Cotypus, Nr. 1429”, and “MIZ 237162” (MIZW).
Description. Body length: 6.2–7.2 (m 6.5) mm. Body proportions in Table 1. Habitus as in Figs. 43 and 45.
Body dark brown to black, with unicolorous elytra; dorsum mat or slightly shiny, without metallic tinge. Palpi and antennae dark, black or almost black; antennomeres 1 and 2 occasionally slightly paler partially, mostly basally, brown or dark brown. Femora yellow or more or less infuscate; tibiae yellow or brownish yellow, infuscate at apex; tarsi dark brown to black.
Head with large convex eyes; tempora convex; genae very narrow, eyes ventrally almost touching buccal fissure. Labral apex almost straight. Supraorbital pore very small, located very close to supraorbital suture slightly before of level of posterior margin of eye. Frons and vertex coarsely and densely rugose-punctate, without microsculpture between punctures. Mandibles short, with almost straight or slightly arcuate mesal margin apically. Antennae moderately long, slightly surpassing pronotal basal margin or (in some females) not reaching it; antennomeres 4–11 markedly enlarged and rather thin, antennomeres 5–8 about 1.5–1.7 times as long as wide.
Pronotum wide, widest slightly before middle. Sides rounded in apical two-thirds, generally slightly sinuate or occasionally almost rectilinear in basal third; lateral bead complete, very narrow throughout; medial lateral seta inserted almost in widest point. Apical margin comparatively shallowly emarginate, bordered along entire length. Apical angles wide, only slightly prominent anteriorly, rounded at apex. Basal margin markedly longer than apical margin, only slightly shorter than elytral base, distinctly bordered along entire length, ciliate. Basal angles obtusangular, with a tiny denticle at apex. Disc moderately convex, more or less depressed laterobasally. Basal foveae wide and shallow, outlines indistinct, fused with laterobasal depressions, or indistinct. Median line roughly engraved, short, markedly not reaching anterior and basal margins. Anterior and posterior transverse depressions indistinct. Surface densely and coarsely rugose-punctate, with fine obliterate microsculpture recognized only laterally.
Elytra oval, comparatively wide, widest behind middle, convex on disc and somewhat gently sloping to apex. Humeri slightly angularly rounded, with distinct small denticle. Lateral margins slightly serrate basally (Fig. 44). Preapical sinuation deep and rather short; sutural angle acutangular, narrowly rounded at tip. Basal border slightly sinuate, forming a very obtuse angle with lateral margin. Striae slightly impressed along entire length, indistinctly punctate anteriorly, gradually becoming smooth behind middle. Intervals almost flat or weakly convex (more clearly at apex), generally equally wide. Discal setigerous pores absent. Marginal umbilicate series more or less clearly divided in basal and apical groups, each consisting of 5–7 setigerous pores. Punctation fine and dense, mostly with four or five punctures across each interval in its middle portion. Microsculpture between punctures present throughout, consisting of slightly transverse meshes.
Prosternal process bordered. Proepisternum distinctly, more or less coarsely punctate. Metepisternum much longer than wide, strongly narrowed posteriorly. Wings fully developed.
Metatarsus slender, in both sexes longer than HWmin and shorter than HWmax, moderately densely setose ventrally. Male pro- and mesotarsomeres 1–4 only slightly dilated, each with adhesive vestiture.
Apex of abdominal sternite slightly concave in male and rounded in female, in both sexes with two pairs of marginal setigerous pores.
Female genitalia (Figs. 59, 60): laterotergite with membranous angulate apex and with one apical seta; distal mesal angle of gonosubcoxite not prominent, with a long seta at apex; gonocoxite very narrow, about as long as gonosubcoxite, with one short thin seta on dorsal ridge of outer side.
Median lobe of aedeagus (Figs. 48–51) in lateral view comparatively strongly bent ventrally in apical quarter; its ventral margin almost straight or slightly arcuate medially; apex almost not bent, without a ventroapical denticle; in dorsal view median lobe almost straight or scarcely curved, more or less evenly narrowed apically; terminal lamella slightly longer than wide, triangular, blunted apically; internal sac with a narrow curved spine preapically.
Comparison. This small species with dark unicolorous elytra is readily distinguished from all other Asian congeners by a combination of several features unique to the region: 1, antennae dark throughout, almost black, with basal antennomeres clearly infuscate and with antennomeres 4–11 markedly enlarged and rather thin; 2, elytral lateral margin slightly serrate basally; 3, genae very narrow, eyes ventrally almost touching buccal fissure; 4, median lobe of aedeagus with a preapical spine in internal sac. In these characters, P. rugosus is taxonomically isolated from other Asian species and apparently more related to some Afrotropical species, for example, P. platythorax Basilewsky, 1948, P. cribricollis Facchini, 2004, P. lepidus Dejean, 1829, P. straeleni Basilewsky, 1947 and P. alternans LaFerte-Senectere, 1853, which also have serrate elytral margin and enlarged antennomeres. Very indistinct serration of lateral elytral margin occasionally also occurs in P. figuratus. In P. rugosus, the serration of the elytral margin is always present and distinct, though the degree of expression of this feature varies individually.
Distribution (Fig. 66). This species was described from many specimens collected in Sri Lanka. Andrewes (1921b, 1928, 1930) recorded it from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the territories of the modern Indian states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal. Based on the examined material, P. rugosus is widespread in the Oriental region from India and Sri Lanka to Vietnam.
Remarks. The species forms two subspecies differing in color of femora.
description: Published as part of Kataev, Boris M., 2023, A review of Asian species of the genus Platymetopus (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Harpalini), pp. 501-536 in Zootaxa 5306 (5) on pages 524-526, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5306.5.1, http://zenodo.org/record/8073166