Megaselia ghalateshahensis, Khameneh & Khaghaninia & Disney & Maleki-Ravasan, 2019

Khameneh, Roya Namaki, Khaghaninia, Samad, Disney, R. Henry L. & Maleki-Ravasan, Naseh, 2019, Twenty one new species of Megaselia Rondani (Diptera: Phoridae) from Iran, Zootaxa 4711 (1), pp. 1-50 : 19-23

Megaselia ghalateshahensis n. sp.

( Figs 123–135)

Material examined. Holotype male, West Azerbaijan province, Mahabad city, Ghalate-shah region, 36°46.01’N, 45°22.37’E, 1605 m, grassland, 19.VI.2017, S. Khaghaninia (56, CUMZ—13-97).

Description. Male. Whole fly as Fig. 123. Frons as Fig. 124, largely devoid of microtrichia ( Fig. 125). Cheek with 3 bristles and jowl with a single longer and more robust bristle. Postpedicels, which lack SPS vesicles, palps and proboscis as Fig. 126, the labella without short spinules below. Thorax brown. Mesopleuron with hairs and a single long bristle, and with 3 notopleural bristles and no cleft in front of these ( Fig. 127). Scutellum with an anterior pair of small hairs and a posterior pair of bristles. Abdominal as Fig. 128. Venter brown, and with hairs on segments 5 and 6). Hypopygium as Figs 129 & 130). Legs brown. Fore tarsus Fig. 131, with some small spinules below the basitarsus ( Fig. 132). Dorsal hair palisade of mid tibia extends about 0.60 times its length. Hairs below basal half of hind femur longer than those of anteroventral row ( Fig. 133). Hind tibia with a dozen moderately differentiated posterodorsal hairs, without anterodorsals, and spinules of apical combs simple. Wings ( Figs 134 & 135) 1.39 mm long. Costal index 0.45. Costal ratios 3.13: 1: 1. Costal cilia (of section 3) 0.07 mm long. Vein 3 without a hair. 2 unequal axillary bristles, the outermost being 0.07 mm long. Sc not reaching R1. Haltere brown ( Fig. 134).

Recognition. In the key to the Megaselia males of the British Isles ( Disney 1989) it runs to couplets 47 and 48, but none of the options fit. A dozen omitted or subsequently described species run to these couplets, differences in the hypopygia, costal indexes and/or the colour of the legs and/or palps exclude all but M. globicornis Schmitz. However , the latter has the hairs below the basal half of the hind femur clearly shorter than those of the anteroventral row ( Fig. 139) and the similar hypopygium ( Figs 136–138) differs in detail, such its possession of a long, fingerlike, left hypandrial lobe ( Fig. 137). In Schnitz’s (1957) key to the Palaearctic Abteilung II it runs to couplet 20 where the hypopygia of both options are clearly different. It fails to run down for the rest of the world.

Etymology. Named after the region of the holotype.