Atherigona (Acritochaeta) tsumeb Deeming & Kirk-Spriggs 2024, sp. nov.
Creators: name: Deeming, John C.
name: Kirk-Spriggs, Ashley H.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Diptera
Muscidae
Atherigona
Atherigona tsumeb

description: Atherigona (Acritochaeta) tsumeb Deeming, sp. nov.
Fig. 22
Etymology: The specific epithet tsumeb is a noun in apposition and is named after the type locality, the Tsumeb District of Namibia.
Description: Male. Body length: ca 3.0 mm; wing length: 3.2 mm. All setae and setulae black.
Head: Colouration yellow on frons, parafacial and gena, infuscate on occiput, ocellar triangle and upper fronto-orbital plate, face creamy white, darker parts with grey pruinescence; palpus and prementum of proboscis infuscate, the latter shiny; lower parafacial very narrow, gena scarcely deeper; antenna with scape and pedicel ferruginous, postpedicel black throughout, arista brown.
Thorax: Colouration black, dorsally with grey pruinescence, bearing brown fascia medially and along dorsocentral lines; postpronotal lobes and entire margin of scutellum yellow; pleura black in ground colour, but anteriorly yellow to a point level with hind insertion of fore leg; prosternum black and shiny. Legs: Yellow, but fore leg black in apical 2 / 5 of length, on tibia and tarsus, tarsus without specialised chaetotaxy. Wing: Membrane hyaline, veins yellow, calypters and basicosta similar, haltere creamy yellow.
Abdomen: Colouration yellow, with conspicuously short setulae and short setae limited to apices of tergites 3–5, syntergite 1 + 2 with basal pair of brown lateral maculae, remaining tergites with small black paired maculae inserted preapically, those on tergite 3 separated by 3 × their own width, on tergite 4 similarly and on tergite 5 by their individual width; cercal plate (Fig. 22) centrally with surface granulose, with small granules centrally and increasingly courser granules laterally, dorsolaterally with pair of upwardly directed setae, on lower margin with pair on either side of dorsomedially directed setae.
Female: Unknown.
Differential diagnosis: The species is very similar to A. (Ac.) gracilipalpis Deeming, 1971 (recorded from Ghana, Nigeria, Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone), sharing with it the same linear, narrow male palpus, with a ventral adornment of fine setulae and also wing vein R 4+5 being apically strongly divergent from vein R 2+3, converging strongly with vein M 1. Whereas in A. (Ac.) gracilipalpis the radial–medial crossvein (r–m) is situated at 0.42 the length of the discal medial cell (dm), it is situated just beyond mid length in the new species (see Table 2 for characters to differentiate the two species).
Type material examined: Holotype ♂ “Ghaub 47 / 19°28'S, 17°00'E / TSUMEB DISTRICT / 16–26 Jul. 1986 / J. Irish / Malaise trapping [printed] // Namibian National / Insect Collection / National Museum / P.O. Box 1203 / Windhoek, Namibia [printed; blue card] // HOLOTYPE ♂ / Atherigona (Acritochaeta) / tsumeb sp. nov. / J.C. Deeming 2024 [printed; red border]” (NMNW; type series #665). In fair condition, fore leg detached and glued to card beneath; direct-pinned, dissected, terminalia in micro-vial pinned beneath specimen.
description: Published as part of Deeming, John C. & Kirk-Spriggs, Ashley H., 2024, A contribution to the knowledge of Namibian Atherigona Rondani (Diptera: Muscidae), with the descriptions of four new species and two new subspecies, pp. 501-535 in Zootaxa 5536 (4) on pages 528-529, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5536.4.1, http://zenodo.org/record/14239209