Szeptyckitheca santiagoi (Yosii, 1959)

Bellini, Bruno Cavalcante, Oliveira, Mariana Fernandes De, Weiner, Wanda Maria, Nunes, Rudy Camilo & Medeiros, Gleyce Da Silva, 2023, Revisiting Szeptyckitheca Betsch & Weiner (Collembola, Symphypleona, Sminthuridae): new species, updated diagnoses, and a key, ZooKeys 1186, pp. 139-174 : 139

Szeptyckitheca santiagoi (Yosii, 1959)

Sphyrotheca santiagoi Yosii, 1959: 58; Lawrence 1968: 333.

Diagnosis.

Color pattern variable, usually mostly dark with a pale dorsum. Ant. IV with ten subsegments; Ant. III with at least 15 chaetae other than the sensory clubs; Ant. II with at least 15 chaetae, one of them clearly longer than the others; Ant. I with five chaetae. Eyepatches with one interocular somewhat spine-like chaeta each. Head vertex with a total of 14 or 16 spines, two of them unpaired; unpaired chaeta A1 absent. Trochanters I-III with 1,1,1 spines, respectively, all blunt; trochanter III with five regular chaetae other than the spine. Ungues without the inner tooth, with tunica and weak pseudonychia; unguiculus I with or without the internal tooth; unguiculus III filament thin and reaching the tip of the unguis III. Large abdomen without capitate mac. Female with a long subanal appendage, bidentate at the apex, smooth or apically serrated. Dens ventral chaetotaxy formula from the apex to the base as: 2,2 … 1, dorsal chaetotaxy with 13 chaetae; mucronal notch prominent (adapted from Yosii 1959 and Lawrence 1968).

Remarks.

Szeptyckitheca santiagoi is the sole species of the genus without the ungual inner tooth. However, the variability of color patterns reported by Lawrence (1968), discrepancies in its redescription compared to the original one of Yosii (1959), like differences in unguiculus morphology and dental chaetotaxy, and the wide distribution of the species in different islands of Asia and Oceania ( Lawrence 1968) suggest the name S. santiagoi hides a species complex. In this sense, the diagnosis herein provided and the data listed in Table 2 for this species should be taken as provisional until the species can be redescribed.

Habitat.

Specimens were found in forest moss and litter, beach debris, up palms and in native gardens ( Lawrence 1968).

Known distribution.

Australia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Solomon Islands ( Yosii 1959; Lawrence 1968; Greenslade 2023).