Australoluciola Ballantyne in Ballantyne & Lambkin 2013
Creators: name: Ho, - Z.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Lampyridae
Australoluciola

description: Australoluciola Ballantyne 2013
Figs 3, 4, 84−86
Australoluciola Ballantyne in Ballantyne & Lambkin 2013: 43. Sartsanga et al. 2017: 727.
Type species. Lampyris australis Fabricius
Diagnosis. Repeated with some modifications from Ballantyne & Lambkin (2013: 39). Australoluciola is predominantly an Australian and New Guinean genus. It is found across the northern Australian coastline to Darwin, and along the eastern coast of Australia either in mangroves or in more open forest south to the Brisbane area, where one species occurs in relict rain forest in suburban areas of Brisbane. Species are slim bodied and usually have orange pronota and black elytra. Females are macropterous and capable of flight. Larvae are slim bodied and terrestrial with laterotergites visible at the sides of the body when viewed from above. One species has been reported from Thailand.
The genus belongs in a group of genera characterized by: pronotal width less than width across elytral humeri, parallel-sided elytra, no MFC, an elongate slender aedeagus with LL largely concealed behind the ML when viewed from beneath (Figs 1, 2); aedeagal sheath elongate slender, widest across middle, without bulbous paraprocts, and with both sides of posterior half of sheath sternite tapering evenly towards a narrow entire apex (Figs 3, 4). Males distinguished from Colophotia in having no median carina on V7, no expanded and oblique PLP and entire, not bipartite, LOs in V7; from Pteroptyx in having no MFC, no deflexed elytral apices, no bulbous aedeagal sheath paraprocts and entire, not bipartite, LOs in V7; from those Pteroptyx with entire LO in V7 by the absence of a MFC, and from P. testacea by the presence in testacea of bipartite LO in V7 (Jusoh et al. 2018)from Pyrophanes (which has a MFC) and Pteroptyx testacea (which has no MFC) in being without both incurving lobes along V7 and bipartite LO in V7; from Trisinuata by the entire LOs in V7 (those of Trisinuata are bipartite); from most Medeopteryx in being without deflexed elytral apices. It differs from Inflata most obviously by the slender aedeagal ML with narrow bases of the LL; the ML of Inflata is bulbous and the bases of the LL much expanded.
All but three species have orange pronotum and dark brown elytra similar to many species of Medeopteryx. Aus. aspera has median brown pronotal markings, and in Aus. flavicollis the pronotum is orange with the elytral base and/or margins may be pale. Aus. japenensis alone has pale yellowish brown dorsal colour and dark elytral apices, a dorsal colour pattern characteristic of many S. E. Asian fireflies (McDermott 1966). V7 may be trisinuate or with an MPP only, and the corners are rounded (there are no well-defined PLP); T8 has a well-defined ventral groove margined by ridges and with short, wide and apically rounded flanges in Aus. aspera and Aus. pharusaurea only.
description: Published as part of Ho, - Z., 2019, The Luciolinae of S. E. Asia and the Australopacific region: a revisionary checklist (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) including description of three new genera and 13 new species, pp. 1-174 in Zootaxa 4687 (1) on page 65, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4687.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3508098