Telothyria auriolus Fleming & Wood, 2020

Fleming, AJ, Wood, D. Monty, Smith, M. Alex, Dapkey, Tanya, Hallwachs, Winnie & Janzen, Daniel, 2020, Revision of Telothyria van der Wulp (Diptera: Tachinidae) and twenty-five new species from Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica with a key to Mesoamerican species, Biodiversity Data Journal 8, pp. 47157-47157 : 47157

Telothyria auriolus Fleming & Wood sp. n.

Materials

Type status: Holotype. Occurrence: occurrenceDetails: http://janzen.sas.upenn.edu; catalogNumber: CNC618910 ; recordedBy: B.V. Peterson; individualID: CNC618910; individualCount: 1; sex: M; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pinned; Taxon: scientificName: Telothyriaauriolus; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Diptera; family: Tachinidae; genus: Telothyria; specificEpithet: auriolus; scientificNameAuthorship: Fleming & Wood, 2019; Location: continent: Central America; country: Mexico; countryCode: MX; stateProvince: Chiapas; verbatimLocality: Palenque ruins; Identification: identifiedBy: AJ Fleming; dateIdentified: 2019; Event: samplingProtocol: Hand collected; verbatimEventDate: 22-Jun-1969; Record Level: language: en; institutionCode: CNC; collectionCode: Insects; basisOfRecord: Pinned Specimen

Description

Male. Length: 10 mm (Fig. 8). Head (Fig. 8 b): frons narrow, 1/6 of head width; frontal vitta narrow yet prominent and visible 1/24 head width; gena 1/11 of head height; 2-3 reclinate orbital setae; anteriormost reclinate orbital almost equal to uppermost frontal seta; ocellar setae absent; outer vertical seta absent; fronto-orbital plate silver throughout; fronto-orbital plate with short blonde hairs interspersed among frontal setae; parafacial pale silver; facial ridge bare; palpus short digitiform with slight upward turn apically, sparsely haired along outer margin; arista brown, apically orange, smoothly tapered, microtrichia at most as long as width of arista; postpedicel entirely orange; postocular region behind margin of eye including gena silver tomentose; occiput gold tomentose over upper 3/4. Thorax (Fig. 8 a, c): gold tomentose, with two almost indistinct pairs of dorsal stripes, outer pair short extending up to 2nd postsutural dorsocentral, broken widely across suture, inner stripes short and slightly broken across suture, only extending up to 1st postsutural dorsocentral; thorax entirely covered in dense plumose blonde hairs; chaetotaxy: 4-5 postpronotal setae, basal setae arranged in a straight line; supra-alar setae 2:3; intra-alar setae 1:2; dorsocentral setae 3:4; acrostichal setae 3:3; katepisternum with three setae. Scutellum gold tomentose; two pairs of strong marginal setae (basal and subapical) and a small pair of crossed apical scutellar setae 1/5th as long as subapical scutellars; basal scutellar setae subequal in length to subapical setae; subapical setae straight; underside of scutellum bearing plumose blonde hairs below basal scutellar setae. Legs: foreleg yellow entirely, midleg dark along tibia and tarsal segments, hindleg with coxa and proximal half of femur yellow, and remainder dark brown in color; anterior leg tibia with regular fringe of equally spaced setae along anteroventral surface, with two posterodorsal setae. Wings: basicosta ivory white; all veins bare, with only 1-2 setulae at base of R4+5; calypteres white translucent with a narrow yellowish fringe. Abdomen (Fig. 8 a, c): ground color dark brown dorsocentrally, with yellow lateroventrally apparent when viewed dorsally; ST1+2 dorsomedially dark brown over 60%, with yellow laterally; T4 with anterior half of tergite yellow ground color, and caudal 1/2 dark brown ground color; T3-T5 with dense silver tomentum along anterior margin of tergite, diffusing over entire tergite, appearing to have a silver sheen when viewed with the naked eye; T5 orange ground color with silver tomentum; median marginal setae absent from T3 and a complete row of marginal setae on T4 and T5; median discal setae absent. Male terminalia: not examined.

Female. unknown at this time.

Diagnosis

Telothyria auriolus sp. n. can be distinguished from all other Telothyria by the following combination of traits: frons narrow, fronto-orbital plate silver throughout, parafacial pale silver, three katepisternal setae, two postsutural intra-alar setae, basicosta ivory white, thorax entirely covered in dense plumose blonde hairs, median marginal setae absent from T3.

Etymology

Telothyria auriolus sp. n. From the Latin adjective, " auriolus " meaning made of gold, in reference to its overall light color and its brilliant yellow legs.

Distribution

Mexico, Chiapas Province, Palenque Ruins; Honduras, Atlantida, 950 m elevation.

Ecology

Specimens hand collected five times at high elevations, further ecology not available.