Lipsothrix Loew, 1873

Podenas, Sigitas, Petersen, Matthew, Kim, A-Young, Park, Sun-Jae, Byun, Hye-Woo & Seo, Hong-Yul, 2019, New Lipsothrix (Diptera: Limoniidae) from Korea, Zootaxa 4688 (4), pp. 561-568 : 562-563

Lipsothrix Loew, 1873

Lipsothrix Loew, 1873: 67 ; Savchenko, 1989: 259–260; Petersen, 2015: 246–248;

Electrolabis Alexander, 1931: 58 .

Type species. Lipsothrix nobilis Loew, 1873 (monotypic).

Adult. Medium-sized crane flies, body length 5.0–12.0 mm. General body coloration variable, yellow to dark brown.

Head Antenna simple, flagellum 14-segmented; flagellomere length 2- 5x width, with short to long verticils and variable pubescence. Rostrum short, palpus four-segmented (most short-palped crane flies, Lipsothrix among them, have five-segmented palpus, but first palpomere is greatly reduced and not counted by most authors).

Thorax Wing elongate, medium-wide, unpatterned in Korean specimens, but could be patterned along crossveins in other species. That is the only Limoniinae genus having three-branched radial sector, R 4 and R 5 separate. Humeral vein distinctly before level of arculus. Vein Sc long, reaching to about branching point of Rs, sc-r at tip of Sc. Radial sector long, slightly arched at base. Free tip of R 1 short, R 2 transverse, at tip of R 1. Discal cell closed. Cross-vein m-cu close to base of discal cell. Anal angle medium-wide, widely rounded. Legs yellow, claw with up to six teeth, one large, remaining distinctly smaller.

Abdomen yellow. Male genitalia with ninth tergite and sternite fused into genital ring, tergite simple, posterior margin nearly straight. Gonocoxite elongate, without ventro-mesal lobe, approximately as long as ninth tergite. Two pairs of terminal gonostyles. Outer gonostylus sclerotised, darkened, acute with small spine at middle. Inner gonostylus elongate, fleshy, setose, blunt-apexed. Interbase long and narrow, differently curved, species-specific. Ovipositor with elongate cercus and hypovalva. Cercus slightly arched, tip pointed upwards. Hypovalva straight, tip nearly reaching middle of cercus.

Larva. White, body length 12–31 mm. Head capsule oval, dorsoventrally compressed, compact and heavily sclerotised ( Rogers & Byers, 1956; Hynes, 1965). Distal end of frons widely rounded. Internolateralia fused with frontoclypeus. Clypeus transverse and sclerotised. Labrum oval with well developed sensory structures. Antenna cylindrical, twice as long as basal width. Apical papilla cone-shaped with two long setae at the base. Mandible, heavily sclerotised, with well developed three apical teeth. Maxilla consists of inner and outer lobes, both lobes sclerotised at the base and setose at the apex, cardo large. Hypostoma with 3 teeth. Abdominal segments 2–7 with dorsal and ventral creeping welts ( Krivosheina & Krivosheina, 2011). Spiracular field with well developed ventral and lateral lobes, dorsal lobe vestigial. Dorsal and ventral lobes sclerotised. Spiracles oblong and oblique, distance between them more than twice the diameter of a spiracle. Anal field consists of two pairs of white anal papillae, some species with bulbous expansion.

Pupa. Mature pupa yellowish white. Cephalic crest and mesonotal spines absent. Pronotal horns cup-like, some species with forward extended dorsal margin. Abdominal segments 3–7 with dorsal and ventral creeping welts. Surface of abdominal segments smooth, without spines ( Rogers & Byers, 1956; Hynes, 1965).

Distribution. Currently 34 species are included in this genus. They are distributed throughout the Nearctic, Neotropical, Oriental and Palearctic regions. The greatest diversity, 14 species, is recorded in the Oriental region, while the West and East Palearctic have seven species each. In the Eastern Palearctic, six species are known from Japan, five of them are endemic to these islands and one is also recorded from the southern Kurile Islands, Russia. Only one species is known from the continental part of the Eastern Palearctic and the genus is now recorded for the Korean Peninsula. Lipsothrix is not recorded in Australia or Africa ( Oosterbroek, 2019). Two fossil species are described from Eocene Baltic amber ( Evenhuis, 2014).