Wanoblemus wui Tian & Fang

Fang, Jie, Li, Wenbo & Tian, Mingyi, 2016, Occurrence of cavernicolous ground beetles in Anhui Province, eastern China (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Trechinae), ZooKeys 625, pp. 99-110 : 106-109

Taxon classification Animalia Coleoptera Carabidae

Wanoblemus wui Tian & Fang sp. n.

Material.

Holotype: male, Baiyun Dong Cave, Huayang Xiang, Xuancheng, 30.3737N, 118.4457E, 300 m altitude, X-25-2015, leg. Yunhe Wu and Wenbo Li, deposited in SCAU. Paratypes: one male and one female, ibid., deposited in SCAU and ANU, respectively.

Diagnosis.

Medium-sized Trechoblemus beetles, with brownish, sparsely pubescent and elongated body, and rather short and stout appendages.

Description.

Length: 3.9-4.0 mm, including mandibles (3.5-3.6 mm, excluding mandibles); width: 1.0-1.1 mm. Habitus as in Fig. 4.

Body brownish, palps and tarsi pale; surface sparsely pubescent, setae on pronotum longer on the underside of head, prosternum and propleura glabrous; legs densely pubescent, covered with long setae; micro sculptural engraved meshes nearly isodiametric, although irregular on head and pronotum moderately transverse on elytra, meshes well marked on head, but absent on elytra.

Head subquadrate, longer than wide, HLm/HW = 1.5, HLl/HW = 1.4; front and vertex moderately convex; frontal furrows fairly long and complete, nearly parallel medially; genae slightly expanded laterally; anterior supraorbital pores located in the middle of genae, sub-equidistant to lateral margin of genae and to posterior pore; clypeus 4-setose, labrum transverse, nearly straight in the front margin, 6-setose; mandibles distinctly curved at apex; ligula short, adnated with paraglossae, 6-setose at apex; palps short, penultimate joints much stouter than apical joints; labial palpomere 2 as long as labial palpomere 3, bisetose on inner margin, with two or three additional setae at the outer margin of the subapex; maxillary palpomeres 3 and 4 subequal in length; suborbital pores located on ventral side of genae; antennomeres subequal in length, except for antennomere 11, which is longer than the others.

Pronotum slightly transverse, PnL/PnW = 0.97, shorter than head, PnL/HLm = 0.76, slightly wider than head, PnW/HW = 1.19, lateral margin finely beaded, anterior lateromarginal pores located at about 1/5 of the apex; posterior lateromarginal pores just before hind angles; base narrower than front, PbW/PfW = 0.87, both nearly straight and unbeaded; frontal impression faint, basal transverse sulcus well-marked; disc strongly convex; scutellum small and short.

Elytra elongate, distinctly longer than fore body, EL/(HLm + PnL) = 1.27, EL/(HLl + PnL) = 1.5, much longer than wide, EL/EW = 1.77; elytra much wider than pronotum, EW/PnW = 1.53; base not bordered; disc moderately convex but fairly depressed near the base; basal pores on either side of scutellum, apical stria absent; anterior and posterior dorsal pores located on stria 3, at about 2/7 and 4/7 from the base of the elytra, respectively; pre-apical pores at about 1/8 of the apex of the elytra, closer to the suture than to the elytra margin; pores 1 and 2 of the marginal umbilicate series close to marginal gutter, pore 2 closer to pore 1 than to pore 3; pores 5 and 6 of middle group closely located; pore 10 near apical margin.

Legs moderately long, densely pubescent; protarsi short, tarsomere 1 shorter than tarsomeres 2 and 3 combined, tarsomeres 3 and 4 as long as wide; tarsomere 1 subequal to, or longer than, tarsomeres 2 to 4 combined in meso- and metatarsi; each abdominal ventrite IV–VI bearing a pair of paramedian setae.

Male genitalia (Fig. 5): Median lobe of the aedeagus well-sclerotized, small but stout, strongly curved ventrally in the middle part, blunt at the apex; base fairly large, sagittal aileron very small and hyaline, inner sac with a large and thick copulatory piece, which is covered with scales, almost 1/3 the length of the aedeagus; in dorsal view, apical lobe short and broad; parameres elongate, right paramere longer than left paramere, each armed with three long setae at apex.

Etymology.

In honor of Yunhe Wu (College of Life Science, Anhui University, Hefei), an active collector of cave insects.

Distribution.

China (Anhui Province). Collected from a single limestone cave in Xuancheng Shi (Fig. 3). Baiyun Dong cave is approximately 1,000 m long and has a total area of about 20,000 m2. This show cave contains many impressive stalactites. Beetle specimens were sampled from the ground surface, in a dark zone covered with abundant litter and bat guano.