Acrapex mediopuncta Bruno Le Ru & Claire Capdevielle-Dulac & Boaz K. Musyoka & Beatrice Pallangyo & Mohamedi Njaku & Onésime Mubenga 2017, comb. nov.
Creators: name: Bruno Le Ru
name: Claire Capdevielle-Dulac
name: Boaz K. Musyoka
name: Beatrice Pallangyo
name: Mohamedi Njaku
name: Onésime Mubenga
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2017
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Noctuidae
Acrapex
Acrapex mediopuncta

description: Acrapex mediopuncta (Bowden, 1956) comb. nov.
Figs 2F, N, 3D, 7A–E
Poecopa mediopuncta Bowden, 1956: 418 –420, fgs 6–9.
Poecopa mediopuncta – Poole 1989: 818 (catalogue).
Diagnosis
Male easily separated from males of other species of the group by the broadly based, stout, strongly curved cornutus, pointed downward at a right angle (Fig. 2N); female easily separated from females of other species of the group by the small sclerotized area at the base of the ductus bursae and the weakly sclerotized antrum (Fig. 3D).
Material examined
Holotype
GHANA: ♂, Gold Coast, Kwadaso, near Kumasi, 25 Jun. 1952, ex larva (in stems of Rottboellia compressa L.), J. Bowden leg. (BMNH 1953/9, Agrotidae genitalia slide 1338).
Allotype
GHANA: ♀, Gold Coast, mile 19–20 on Kumasi-Mampong Road, 31 Aug. 1951, ex larva (in stems of Setaria megaphylla (Steud) Dur. & Schinz.), J. Bowden leg. (BMNH 1953/11, Agrotidae genitalia slide 1337).
Paratype
GHANA: 1 ♂, same locality and date as allotype; 12 paratypes of both sexes were recorded in the original description; only one was found in BMNH.
Other material
CAMEROON: 1 ♂, Southwest Region, Limbe, Wete Wete, 04°04.417' N, 09°01.250' E, 30 m a.s.l., 2 Feb. 2007, ex larva (in stem of Setaria megaphylla (Steud) Dur. & Schinz.), B. Le Ru leg. (MNHN, gen. prep. LERU Bruno/G284).
Description
The descriptions of the external features of the male holotype and female allotype by Bowden (1956) were accurate. The male looks very similar to the female; however, the general colour of the fore wing is a little bit darker in the male than in the female (Fig. 7A–D).
WINGSPAN. 20–32 mm (3 ♂♂); 33 mm (1 ♀).
MALE AND FEMALE GENITALIA (Figs 2F, N, 3D). The genitalia of both sexes were described by Bowden (1956) with suffcient detail; however, it should be added that the vesica of the aedeagus is hand-shaped with a stout, broadly based, strongly curved cornutus, pointed downward at a right angle.
Bionomics
Acrapex mediopuncta is a markedly forest species inhabiting open patches of grasses along forest roads. Larvae collected in Ghana were reported from P. purpureum, R. compressa, S. arundinaceum and S. megaphylla (Bowden 1956) (Table 3). The few larvae collected in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo by our group were all from S. megaphylla; unfortunately, no pictures were taken before pupation. Larvae were collected at the bottom of young stems and were always solitary. Typically, plants exhibiting signs of infestation by A. mediopuncta larvae have a curled, brown, central leaf. No pupae were found in the stems, and therefore the borers probably pupate in the soil near exit holes.
Distribution
Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana and the Republic of the Congo. The records are from Guineo-Congolian rain forests, lowland rain forests and secondary grassland vegetation mosaics (Mosaics #1–3) (White 1983) (Fig. 4), belonging to the Congolian bioregion (Linder et al. 2012) (Fig. 5).
description: Published as part of Bruno Le Ru, Claire Capdevielle-Dulac, Boaz K. Musyoka, Beatrice Pallangyo, Mohamedi Njaku & Onésime Mubenga, 2017, Phylogenetic analysis and systematics of the Acrapex unicolora Hampson species complex (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae, Noctuinae, Apameini), with the description of Fve new species from the Afrotropics, pp. 1-36 in European Journal of Taxonomy 270 on pages 18-19, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2017.270, http://zenodo.org/record/889483