Telothyria obscura Fleming & Wood, 2020

Fleming, AJ, Wood, D. Monty, Smith, M. Alex, Dapkey, Tanya, Hallwachs, Winnie & Janzen, Daniel, 2020, Revision of Telothyria van der Wulp (Diptera: Tachinidae) and twenty-five new species from Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica with a key to Mesoamerican species, Biodiversity Data Journal 8, pp. 47157-47157 : 47157

Telothyria obscura Fleming & Wood sp. n.

Materials

Type status: Holotype. Occurrence: catalogNumber: CNC618905 ; recordedBy: D.M. Wood; individualID: CNC618905; individualCount: 1; sex: M; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pinned; Taxon: scientificName: Telothyriaobscura; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Diptera; family: Tachinidae; genus: Telothyria; specificEpithet: obscura; scientificNameAuthorship: Fleming & Wood, 2019; Location: continent: Central America; country: Costa Rica; countryCode: CR; stateProvince: Puntarenas; verbatimLocality: Monteverde; verbatimElevation: 1799; Identification: identifiedBy: AJ Fleming; dateIdentified: 2019; Event: samplingProtocol: Hand collected; verbatimEventDate: 20-Aug-1991; Record Level: language: en; institutionCode: CNC; collectionCode: Insects; basisOfRecord: Pinned Specimen Type status: Paratype. Occurrence: catalogNumber: CNC618892 ; recordedBy: D.M. Wood; individualID: CNC618892; sex: M; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pinned; Taxon: scientificName: Telothyriaobscura; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Diptera; family: Tachinidae; genus: Telothyria; specificEpithet: obscura; scientificNameAuthorship: Fleming & Wood, 2019; Location: continent: Central America; country: Costa Rica; countryCode: CR; stateProvince: Puntarenas; verbatimLocality: Monteverde Cerro; verbatimElevation: 1800; Identification: identifiedBy: AJ Fleming; dateIdentified: 2019; Event: samplingProtocol: Hand collected; verbatimEventDate: 22-30-Aug-1996; Record Level: language: en; institutionCode: CNC; collectionCode: Insects; basisOfRecord: Pinned Specimen Type status: Paratype. Occurrence: recordedBy: D.M. Wood; sex: M; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pinned; Taxon: scientificName: Telothyriaobscura; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Diptera; family: Tachinidae; genus: Telothyria; specificEpithet: obscura; scientificNameAuthorship: Fleming & Wood, 2019; Location: continent: Central America; country: Costa Rica; countryCode: CR; stateProvince: Puntarenas; verbatimLocality: Monteverde; verbatimElevation: 1799; Identification: identifiedBy: AJ Fleming; dateIdentified: 2019; Event: samplingProtocol: Hand collected; verbatimEventDate: 20-Aug-1991; Record Level: language: en; institutionCode: CNC; collectionCode: Insects; basisOfRecord: Pinned Specimen Type status: Paratype. Occurrence: recordedBy: D.M. Wood; sex: M; lifeStage: adult; preparations: pinned; Location: continent: Central America; country: Costa Rica; countryCode: CR; stateProvince: Puntarenas; verbatimLocality: Monteverde; verbatimElevation: 1799; Identification: identifiedBy: AJ Fleming; dateIdentified: 2019; Event: samplingProtocol: Hand collected; verbatimEventDate: 20-Aug-1991; Record Level: language: en; institutionCode: CNC; collectionCode: Insects; basisOfRecord: Pinned Specimen

Description

Male. Length: 5-8 mm (Fig. 36). Head (Fig. 36 b): frons wide almost 1/5 of head width; gena 1/10 of head height; three reclinate orbital setae; anteriormost reclinate orbital seta 1.25X longer than uppermost frontal seta; ocellar setae absent; outer vertical seta absent; fronto-orbital plate gold on upper 30%, brilliant silver on remainder; fronto-orbital plate densely covered with both pale blonde and light reddish-brown hairs interspersed among frontal setae; parafacial pale brilliant silver; facial ridge bare; palpus short yellow and digitiform with slight upward turn apically, sparsely haired along outer margin; arista brown, smoothly tapered, microtrichia at most 2X as long as width of arista; pedicel orange, postpedicel with slight orange apex, adjacent to pedicel; postocular region behind margin of eye upper half gold, with lower half including gena silver tomentose; upper half of occiput pale gold tomentose, lower half silver tomentose. Thorax (Fig. 36 a, c): dark brownish ground color with brown-bronze tomentum lightening to almost gold color along lateral edges of scutum, with four dorsal stripes, thick and evident, innermost pair ending at 1st postsutural dorsocentral, outermost pair slightly broken across suture, plus one extra dorsal stripe dorsocentrally ending at suture; thorax densely covered in plumose blonde hairs only along lateral surfaces; chaetotaxy: 4-5 postpronotal setae, basal setae arranged in a straight line; supra-alar setae 2:3; intra-alar setae 2:2; dorsocentral setae 3:3; acrostichal setae 3:3; katepisternum with three setae. Scutellum dark brown with slight bronze-gold tomentum only along apex; two pairs of strong marginal setae (basal and subapical) and a small pair of crossed apical scutellar setae 1/5th as long as subapical scutellars; basal scutellar setae subequal in length to subapical setae; subapical setae straight; underside of scutellum bearing predominantly plumose blonde hairs with few interspersed regular non-plumose black hairs below basal scutellar setae. Legs: all legs with an overall light reddish-brown ground color throughout with silver tomentum on posterodorsal surfaces, tibia yellow ground color with dense black hairs giving them an overall dark appearance, tarsal segments appearing dark brown; anterior leg tibia with irregularly sized tapered fringe of equally spaced setae along basal half of anterodorsal surface, with one posterodorsal setae. Wings: basicosta beige, brown basally; all veins bare, and very slightly infuscate, with one setula at base of R4+5; calypters infuscate brown translucent with white fringe densely populated with short translucente microsetulae only visible under certain angles of light. Abdomen (Fig. 36 a, c): ground color dark brown dorsally, T1+2-T4 with yellow ventrolaterally and T5 brown with orange apically; T4 with a complete unbroken band of dark ground color along posterior edge; T3-T5 with brassy-brown tomentu throughout and dense gold tomentum along anterior margin of tergites, marginal tomentum broken along midline; median marginal setae present only on T4 and T5; median discal setae absent. Terminalia (Fig. 36 d, e, f): Sternite 5 with a wide deeply separated median cleft, widely V-shaped, margins tomentose; lateral lobes of sternite subtriangular apically, outer margins covered in strong setae; basal section of sternite 5 subequal to length of apical lobes. Cerci in posterior view sharply pointed rectangular, equal in length to surstyli, fused along entire length; evenly tapering with medial shoulder absent. In lateral view cerci, with a strong downward bend, along apical 1/3, and several strong widely spaced setae along basal 2/3rds. Surstylus in lateral view broad and leaf-shaped, pointed at tip; fused with epandrium; when viewed dorsally surstyli appear robust and straight with a very slight club apically. Basiphallus short and stout and stout, distiphallus subequal to in length to basiphallus, weakly tapering apically.

Female. Unknown at this time.

Diagnosis

Telothyria obscura sp. n. can be distinguished from all other Telothyria by the following combination of traits: ocellar setae absent, fronto-orbital plate gold on upper 30%, brilliant silver on remainder, parafacial brilliant silver, postpedicel more than 50% black, only orange adjacent to pedicel, plumose hairs absent on disc of scutum, thorax with four thoracic stripes plus one extra presutural stripe dorsomedially, and three katepisternal setae, abdominal ground color orange with a brownish-black middorsal stripe occupying almost entire dorsal surface of tergites, abdomen brassy-brown tomentose throughout, with dark orange lateroventrally from ST1+2-T5, and T5 orange apically with brassy-brown sheen of tomentum. Telothyria obscura differs from Telothyria omissa by the presence of median marginal setae on T4.

Etymology

Telothyria obscura sp. n. From the Latin adjective, " obscurus " meaning dark or dim, in reference to the darkened nature of the dorsal surface of the thorax and abdomen.

Distribution

Costa Rica, Puntarenas Province, Monteverde 1799-1800 m elevation.

Ecology

Specimens hand collected, four times from 1800 m, further ecology not available.