Canobolas nobilis Lea 1917, comb. nov.
Creators: name: Reid, Chris A. M.
name: Jurado-Rivera, José A.
name: Beatson, Max
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2009
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Chrysomelidae
Canobolas
Canobolas nobilis

description: Canobolas nobilis (Lea, 1917), comb. nov.
(Figs 1–4, 9–10, 13, 17, 21, 24–25)
Geomela nobilis Lea, 1917: 581
Material examined. Holotype: 3/ nobilis Lea, Type, Jenolan/ Geomela nobilis Lea N.S.W. type / (SAM)
Other material (21). 13/ Jenolan NSW 22.ii.1982 F. T. Fricke/ ex H. W. Brown coll./ poa sphagnum/ (AMS); 53, 2Ƥ/ NSW Mt Canobolas 33:20S 148:59E, c 1395m, GPS#163, 55H0684386-6308736, grass tussocks, alpine woodland, 19.x.2005, J. Jurado & C. Reid/ (AMS); 1Ƥ/ ditto except 1–2.xi.2005, J. Jurado/ (AMS); 13/ NSW Mt Towac 33:21S 148:59E, c12503, GPS#164, 55H0684207-6307251, grass tussocks, alpine woodland, 19.x.2005, J. Jurado & C. Reid/ (AMS); 43, 7Ƥ/ Mt Canobolas, Federal Falls picnic area, 33:21S 148:58E, c 1280m, GPS#173, 55H0683946-6308188, grass tussocks, alpine woodland, 2–3.xi.2005, J. Jurado/ (AMS, ANIC, BMNH).
Description. Length: male 4–5mm; female 5–5.5mm. Shape: body ovate and moderately arched, length 1.5–1.6x width, length 2.1–2.4x height. Colour: body and appendages black, with faint bluish, greenish or violet hues, or antennae and maxillary palpi dark reddish-brown. Dorsal surfaces shining throughout, without microreticulation, but evenly micropunctate (punctures not distinguishable at <20x magnification).
Head: frontoclypeus with sparse fine punctures, generally sparser posteriorly, denser and often larger anteriorly and laterally, but the density varying between individuals; frontoclypeal suture strongly to weakly demarkated, base of clypeal area usually feebly depressed; antennae c. 0.4x (male) or 0.3x (female) body length; antennomeres 9–10 short, length 0.9–1.0x width.
Thorax: pronotal puncturation variable, sparsely to closely and evenly punctured, punctures fine at middle, larger but not denser anteriorly and laterally; hypomeron smooth or shallowly wrinkled at sides; elytral striae 1–8 complete, slightly impressed, 9th stria reduced to a few punctures in basal third or rarely also in apical third; strial punctures close, separated by 1–3 puncture diameters; punctures of basal half stria 3 separated by 1–2 diameters; apical strial punctures not enlarged; interstrial punctures sparse, variably sized but much smaller than strial punctures; apices of elytra with obtuse apical tooth; metaventrite femoral plate with posterior margin curved, slightly sinuate.
Abdomen: ventrites I–IV evenly microreticulate, V without microreticulation; ventrites finely and sparsely punctured, more strongly and closely at sides, with short recumbent setae; first ventrite with broad arcuate femoral plate, c. 0.4x length of ventrite at this point; penis curved and abruptly narrowed to tip in lateral view, with rounded tip in dorsal view, flagellum slightly protruding from ostium in repose, visible in lateral view; female sternite 8 with long thin spiculum; second segment vaginal palpi elongate-ovate; spermatheca falcate, with hooked tip.
Distribution and biology. This species was described from a single specimen (Lea 1917). It is now known from Mount Canobolas and Jenolan, central eastern New South Wales. These are relatively high altitude (> 800m) localities in the western Blue Mountains separated by approximately 100km of elevated landscape, mostly cleared or carpeted with Pinus radiata plantations (Anonymous 2003). At Mount Canobolas, 19 specimens of Canobolas nobilis were collected by grasstufting in herb rich snowgum woodland (dominated by Eucalyptus pauciflora) on the near-summit southern slopes, at 1250–1395m, during October and November (Fig. 26). These sites belong to the ‘grasslands and grassy open woodlands’ plant community in the Mount Canobolas reserve (Turner 2002), but the beetle always occurred under or near eucalypt trees.
The precise location of the Jenolan population is unclear, as the name Jenolan could be applied to a broad area of limestone gorge country from Jenolan Caves (800m) to Jenolan State Forest (1200m). Grasstufting by CAMR on 25 October 2008 at 1140–1200m in subalpine woodland remnants beside the road in Jenolan State Forest, dominated by Eucalyptus pauciflora, and at 800–900m in the vicinity of Jenolan Caves, failed to find any specimens of this species.
Feeding by adults was not observed in the field. We attempted to identify hostplants by two methods: laboratory rearing and barcoding plant tissues from whole specimen DNA extraction.
10 specimens of C. nobilis were collected by grasstufting mixed low herbs and grasses, and retained alive in the laboratory with a sample of the plants present, including Asperula (Rubiaceae), Geranium (Geraniaceae), Plantago (Plantaginaceae) and Poaceae. No feeding was observed during six weeks survival in captivity. These adults may have been aestivating.
However plant DNA sequences were obtained by JAJR from one specimen collected at Mount Canobolas in early November 2005 (lot #173). Sequences from the chloroplast trnL intron from plant fragments in chrysomelids have been successfully used for identification of their hosts (Jurado-Rivera et al. 2009). The method consists of analyzing phylogenetically the diet sequence together with a set of closely related sequences from DNA databases, enabling identification of the host’s taxonomic position. The P6 loop of the trnL intron was sampled from one specimen of C. nobilis by JAJR and found to be more diverse than any known species (Jurado-Rivera et al. 2009). Four different sequences were found belonging to 3 plant families with maximum support in phylogenetic analyses (Bayesian posterior probability pp =1): Caryophyllaceae, Myrtaceae and Solanaceae. One sample belonged to Caryophyllaceae, specifically either Stellaria or Cerastium, with a higher probability of Stellaria (pp =0.78). Both the native Stellaria flaccida and the introduced weed Cerastium glomeratum occur in the snowgum woodland (Hunter 2002). Two sequences of Myrtaceae were recovered, without generic resolution. Only Eucalyptus and Leptospermum are present where the beetle was collected (Hunter 2002). One sample was identified as Solanaceae, although no members of this family are recorded from snowgum woodland at Mount Canobolas (Hunter 2002). These putative plant hosts are puzzlingly diverse and unrelated (Stevens 2009), but indicate that Canobolas nobilis is polyphagous.
description: Published as part of Reid, Chris A. M., Jurado-Rivera, José A. & Beatson, Max, 2009, A new genus of Chrysomelinae from Australia (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), pp. 53-66 in Zootaxa 2207 on pages 60-64, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.189744