Habrophlebia consiglioi Biancheri, 1959

Zrelli, Sonia, Boumaiza, Moncef, Bejaoui, Mustapha, Gattolliat, Jean-Luc & Sartori, Michel, 2011, New reports of mayflies (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) from Tunisia, Revue suisse de Zoologie 118 (1), pp. 3-10 : 5-7

Habrophlebia consiglioi Biancheri, 1959

Habrophlebia sp. : Boumaiza & Thomas, 1986

Habrophlebia sp. : Thomas, 1998

MATERIAL EXAMINED: loc. 4 ( Lasfer 30-IV-2006). – loc. 5 ( Bransia 24-V-2005) . – loc. 6 ( Mrij 25-V-2005) . – loc. 8 ( Berbeg 24-V-2005) . – loc. 9 ( Mouagène 29-VI-2005) . – loc. 10 ( Ennour 24-V-2005, 28-VI-2005) . – loc. 13 ( Edmen 15-V-2005) . – loc. 18 ( Lâarima 25-IV- 2009) . – loc. 24 ( Rennagha 30-IV-2006) . – loc. 25 ( El Mâadene 30-IV-2006) .

REMARKS: The genus Habrophlebia includes six West Palearctic species (Alba- Tercedor, 2000), and is represented in North Africa by two of them: H. fusca (Curtis, 1834) and H. vaillantorum Thomas, 1986 ( Thomas et al., 1999).

In Morocco, two species are recorded, H. fusca and H. vaillantorum. In Algeria, only H. fusca is known, and in Tunisia this genus is represented by Habrophlebia sp. and H. fusca but this latter record by Kraiem (1986) is probably erroneous (see Thomas, 1998 for complete references therein).

Habrophlebia consiglioi can be distinguished from H. fusca and H. lauta as follows: in H. consiglioi nymphs, teeth on the posterior margin of the abdominal terga are of triangular shape, whereas such teeth are quadrangular in H. fusca. Dorsal face of femur with setae pointed and feathered in H. consiglioi, contrary to H. lauta where they are blunt and entire ( Belfiore & Gaino, 1984).

Larvae of H. consiglioi are also distinguished by the gills baring a small number of filaments in the ventral lamella (1-3) and in the dorsal lamella (3-6) contrary to H. eldae for which the number of filaments is respectively (3-5) and (5-11).

Our investigations of the egg morphology (Figs 6-8) indicates that chorionic structure of the Tunisian specimens is similar to those from Sardinia (Mazzini & Gaino, 1985), bringing further arguments, besides the similarity of the larvae, for the conspecificity of both populations.

The discovery of H. consiglioi in Tunisia is of major importance. This is not only the first report of the species in North Africa, but it proves that the species is not endemic to Sardinia as previously thought ( Buffagni et al., 2003). To our knowledge, this is the first time such a distribution (Sardinia-Tunisia) is mentioned for circum Mediterranean mayflies. At the moment, we have no information allowing us to decide if H. consiglioi originated from Sardinia and colonized subsequently Tunisia, or the contrary as recently shown for some reptiles ( Carranza et al., 2008).

All populations of H. consiglioi in Tunisia are restricted to streams of the Northwest area.