Eutheia bekchievi, Jałoszyński, Paweł, 2014

Jałoszyński, Paweł, 2014, Eutheia bekchievi sp. n. (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Scydmaeninae) from Bulgaria, Zootaxa 3779 (4), pp. 493-496 : 494-495

Eutheia bekchievi sp. n.

( Figs. 1–5 )

Type material. Holotype: BULGARIA (Blagoevgrad Prov.): ♂, two labels: "BG, Belasitsa Mts., / Samuilovo vill., in rotten / wood and leaf litter, 450 m. / 14.06.2008 / leg. R. Bekchiev" [white, printed]; " EUTHEIA \ bekchievi m. \ det. P. Jałoszyński, '14 \ HOLOTYPUS " [red, printed] ( MNHW).

Diagnosis. Male: body large (nearly 1.5 mm together with pygidium) and broad, dark brown; antennae strikingly slender and without demarcated club, with only antennomere III slightly transverse; aedeagus with a pair of elongate apical projections and parameres extremely broadened near middle.

Description. BL 1.45 mm. Body of male ( Fig. 1 ) flat and strongly elongate, dark brown with slightly lighter appendages, covered with light brown vestiture.

Head ( Fig. 1 ) broadest at moderately large eyes, HL 0.18 mm, HW 0.26 mm; vertex and frons confluent and weakly convex; oval median part of head dorsum delimited from surrounding areas by shallow U-shaped impression, with arms of "U" extending posteriorly from posterior margins of barely marked supraantennal tubercles. Punctures on frons and vertex shallow and diffused (i.e., without sharp margins) but dense, separated by spaces equal to 0.5–1 puncture diameters; setae short, sparse and suberect. Antennae ( Fig. 1 ) slender and gradually thickened distally, AnL 0.65 mm, antennomeres I–II, V–VII and IX–XI distinctly elongate, antennomere III slightly transverse, antennomeres IV and VIII barely noticeably longer than wide.

Pronotum ( Fig. 1 ) subrectangular with rounded anterior and lateral margins, broadest near anterior third; PL 0.33 mm, PW 0.38 mm; hind angles nearly right; posterior margin shallowly bisinuate; pronotal base with five well-defined pits, median one smallest and lateral pair largest. Punctures on pronotal disc similar to those on head dorsum, setae short, sparse and suberect.

Elytra oval, broadest near middle; EL 0.73 mm, EW 0.53 mm, EI 1.38. Punctures on median part of elytra slightly larger and more distinct than those on head and pronotum but distinctly sparser; setae short, sparse and suberect. Hind wings well developed.

Legs moderately long and slender, unmodified.

Aedeagus ( Figs. 2–3 ) elongate; AeL 0.35 mm; in ventral view basal capsule of median lobe strongly elongate; apical part narrowing toward apex, subtrapezoidal, with a pair of elongate apical projections; parameres in ventral view strongly broadened in middle and strongly narrowing distally, each with two long and one short apical setae.

Female. Unknown.

Distribution. SW Bulgaria (Belasitsa Mountains) ( Figs. 4–5 ).

Etymology. This species is dedicated to Rostislav Bekchiev, a specialist on Pselaphinae and a collector of the only known specimen of E. bekchievi .

Remarks. All West Palaearctic species of Eutheia revised by Franz (1971) have simple apices of the aedeagus, without lateral apical projections. The projections, in various forms, are known in East Palaearctic Eutheia (summarized by Jałoszyński (2010a)). Eutheia bekchievi is remarkable not only because of this unusual feature, but also by extremely broadened median parts of parameres, long and slender antennae without delimited club, small head (much narrower than the pronotum), and large, darkly pigmented body. Franz (1971) did not illustrate aedeagi of two European species: E. clavicornis Reitter, 1884 from Greece (known from a single female only) and E. merklii Simon, 1880 (from Hungary and Romania), known from a single male. These both species, however, can be readily distinguished from E. bekchievi on the basis of the light brown or even yellowish-brown pigmentation, head only slightly narrower than pronotum, and the antennomeres III–X (in E. clavicornis ) or VIII–X (in E. merklii ) transverse (elongate in E. bekchievi ).

Figures

FIGURES 1 – 5. Eutheia bekchievi sp. n., habitus of holotype male (1); aedeagus in ventral (2) and lateral (3) views, and distribution (4 – 5; frame in Fig. 4 enlarged in Fig. 5).