Pseudophoraspis Kirby, 1903

Wang, Zhenzhen, Zhao, Qiongyao, Li, Weijun, Che, Yanli & Wang, Zongqing, 2018, Establishment of a new genus, Brephallus Wang et al., gen. nov. (Blattodea, Blaberidae, Epilamprinae) based on two species from Pseudophoraspis, with details of polymorphism in species of Pseudophoraspis, ZooKeys 785, pp. 117-131 : 117

Pseudophoraspis Kirby, 1903 Figures 2 G–R, 3 A–E, 4 A–C, 4F, 5 A–F

Type species:

Epilampra nebulosa Burmeister, 1838.

The species P. clavellata and P. recurvata exhibit sexual dimorphism (male with developed tegmina and wings, females with tegmina reduced to lateral scales and wings absent) (Figure 2 G–N); therefore, we provide below supplementary information on the nymphs and females.

Generic description.

Body slender, general color yellowish brown, head entirely covered by pronotum. Pronotum with numerous brown spots, smooth, without or with scattered punctuation. Male with fully-developed tegmina and wings, female with tegmina reduced to lateral scales without wings or with fully-developed tegmina and wings (Figure 2 G–R). Hind metatarsus shorter than other tarsal segments combined, with small apical euplantulae along its lower margin, with spinules, euplantulae occupying less than half of its length, with two equal rows of spines along most of its length. Tarsal claws symmetrical and unspecialized. Supra-anal plate semicircular, meso-posterior margin emarginate (Figure 4F).

Male genitalia (Figure 4 A–C). Right phallomere with well-developed caudal sclerite, R1T subrectangular in shape (Figure 4 A–C “c.p.R1T”), R2 rounded, R3 weakly sclerotized, without branch, narrowed caudally. Sclerite L2D divided into basal and apical parts, basal part rod-like, apical part with well-developed apical outgrowth (Figure 4 A–C “a.L2D”), with bristles. Sclerite L3 with apex pointed and folded structure scattered with bristles (Figure 4 A–C “f.s.”).

Remarks.

Wang et al. (2013) subdivided the Chinese Pseudophoraspis into two species groups: the fruhstorferi group and the gorochovi group, but the latter lacked information on females. The fruhstorferi group currently includes three species: P. fruhstorferi Shelford, 1910, P. tramlapensis Anisyutkin, 1999 and P. kabakovi Anisyutkin, 1999. Because we have transferred the former two species to the new genus, Brephallus Wang et al., gen. n., the fruhstorferi group is renamed as nebulosa group. Some diagnostic characters between the nebulosa group and the gorochovi group are shown in Table 3.

The mean interspecific sequence divergence among the three Pseudophoraspis members ranged from 4.1% to 9.0% (Table 4), but there are distinguishing differences among them, as described below.