Semia tibetensis Yang & Wei 2014, sp. nov.
Creators: name: Yang, Mingsheng
name: Wei, Cong
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hemiptera
Cicadidae
Semia
Semia tibetensis

description: Semia tibetensis, sp. nov.
(Figures 7 – 8)
Type material
Holotype: ♂ (NWAFU), China: Tibet Autonomous Region, Motuo, 7 June 1980, 1310 m, light trap, coll. Jin Yintao & Wu Jianyi.
Description of male
Head (Figures 7A – B, 8A) mostly yellowish brown, with pair of large irregular brown markings on vertex; ocellus reddish, eye castaneous, distance between lateral ocellus and corresponding eye much longer than that between lateral ocelli; gena and lorum mostly reddish brown, with tuft of golden hairs on gena; postclypeus moderately prominent, with brown stripes along transverse grooves mid-anteriorly and large brown mark posteriorly; anteclypeus yellowish, without distinct markings; rostrum brown with blackish tip, almost extending to hind margin of sternite II.
Pronotum (Figure 7A – B) mostly ochraceous, with pair of central longitudinal black fasciae broadened at both anterior and posterior parts; pronotal collar yellowish green, with anterolateral margin dentate and posterolateral angle developed. Mesonotum (Figure 7A – B) mostly greenish brown, with the following ochraceous marks: slender central longitudinal fascia with anterior end narrowed and posterior end distinctly broadened; pair of broad outwardly curved fasciae along submedian sigillae; pair of inwardly curved fasciae along parapsidal sutures, with posterior end broadened and connected with the posterior end of outwardly curved fasciae; several small irregular spots on lateral sigillae. Cruciform elevation (Figure 7A) yellowish green, sparsely covered with long golden hairs. Ventral surface of thorax (Figure 7B) pale yellowish.
Wings (Figure 7A – B) hyaline, with veins brown or yellowish green; forewing with infuscations along crossveins r, m, r-m and m-cu, CuA 2, base of vein RA 1, bases and apices of veins RA 2, RP, M 1 – 4 and CuA 1, and outer margins of apical cells 1 – 7; hind wing tinged with continuous infuscations along basal veins of apical cells 1 – 3 and outer margins of apical cells 1 – 6.
Legs (Figure 7B) pale yellowish or brown; four spines present on fore femur, of which primary and secondary spines much longer than other two; all spines are erect, sharp, with apices reddish brown.
Abdomen (Figure 7A – B) yellowish to reddish brown, sparsely covered with golden hairs dorsally; tergite VIII covered with white pollinosity; timbal cover (Figure 8B) dark brown, small and somewhat semicircular; timbal (Figure 8B) largely exposed with six ribs. Operculum (Figure 7B) pale yellowish, reaching to posterior margin of sternite II, transverse but both opercula widely separated from each other. Ventral surface of abdomen (Figure 7B) mostly pale brown, somewhat translucent.
Genitalia (Figure 8C – D). Pygofer somewhat oval in ventral view; dorsal beak long with obtuse tip, protruding upwards in lateral view; distal shoulder acute, very slightly curved laterally; uncal lobe of pygofer very long and broad, separated from the other one basally, with inner and outer margins parallel, apex nearly truncated; basal lobe of pygofer relatively long and erect. Sternite VII short, with posterior margin rounded.
Measurement (1 ♂)
Length of body (excluding wings): 36.0; length of forewing: 41.0; width of forewing: 12.0; width of head (including eyes): 9.0; width of pronotum (including pronotal collar): 11.0; width of mesonotum: 9.5.
Distribution
China (Tibet).
Etymology
The specific name is after the locality of the holotype.
Remarks
This new species can be easily distinguished from other species of Semia by a body of morphological characters, for example, the relatively long and erect basal lobe of pygofer, the long and broad uncal lobes of pygofer which are separated from each other basally and parallel from bases to truncated apices, although further molecular identification of this species could not be performed in this study since the only type specimen of this new species was stored for too long to be used for molecular study.
DNA analysis
We obtained 15 COI sequences (length 421bp) from four Semia species and its allies (three Pomponia species) from China in our study, which have been deposited in GenBank (accession numbers are shown in Table 1). Also included in the molecular analysis were another four sequences downloaded from GenBank, which represent four species of three genera (i.e. Semia, Pomponia and Psithyristria) (see Table 1). Among the five species of Semia included in this study, the corrected genetic divergence between different species is 9.7% on average, with span 7.0 – 12.7%; it is 0.5% on average, with span 0.0 – 1.1% within the same species. Intraspecific genetic divergences are much lower than that among different species of Semia, and no genetic overlaps between intraspecific and interspecific divergences are found, indicating that the species status of every Semia species included in this study is genetically well supported to discriminate from other congeneric species. In addition, the NJ tree (Figure 9) based on the distance method shows Semia and its allied two genera formed a cluster individually, and all representative species of Semia are found to be monophyletic with high statistical support.
description: Published as part of Yang, Mingsheng & Wei, Cong, 2014, New species of the cicada genus Semia Matsumura (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) from China and a phylogeny of Semia spp. and their relatives based on molecular data, pp. 2307-2323 in Journal of Natural History (J. Nat. Hist.) (J. Nat. Hist.) 48 (37 - 38) on pages 2318-2321, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2014.908975, http://zenodo.org/record/4631483