Lafontaineana alexandrae Martinez, 2021

Martinez, Jose I., Schmidt, B. Christian & Miller, Jacqueline Y., 2021, A new Andean genus, Lafontaineana, with descriptions of four new species and two new Neotropical species of Panthea (Noctuidae, Pantheinae), ZooKeys 1028, pp. 113-134 : 113

Lafontaineana alexandrae Martinez sp. nov. Figures 16 , 30

Type material.

Holotype: ♀, Ecuador, Zamora-Chinchipe, Reserva Biologica San Francisco, Montane Rainforest, Blacklight 2 × 15W, 30 Jan. 2013, 19.00-21.30 h, 03°58.94'S, 79°04.84'W, 2212 m, coll. Gunnar Brehm & Yoko Matsumura / DNA Barcode run 2013, COI-5P marker, University of Guelph / Arcec 30166 / leg sampled in ethanol G. Brehm, Green vial caps. deposited in FSU.

Etymology.

This species is named after the senior authors’ sister, Alejandra Martinez, who has supported JIM’s work since the beginning of his career.

Diagnosis.

Lafontaineana alexandrae is the only species in the genus that has a dark hindwing. The female genitalia differ from the rest of the Lafontaineana by the presence of the small projections; small papillae anales-like on the A8 membrane.

Description.

Head. Palpus marbled in yellow, white, and black; frons covered by a mixture of yellow and black scales. Thorax. Polygons small, outlined by wide yellow lines; setal tuft pale orange; ventrally brown with some dark gray scales. Wing. Forewing length 22-24 mm; yellow with blurry black lines; basal and medial lines absent, and space between antemedial and subterminal lines brown; crescent-shaped orbicular spot; reniform spot arrow tip-shaped, curving inwards on outer margin with lunate marking near inner margin; hindwing completely covered by gray scales; fringe black with some spots in yellow; pattern lines barely visible. Legs. Black with white joints and yellow tufts. Abdomen. Black with yellow intersternal membrane ventrally; dorsally with huge black line of tufts with some scales in white; anal papilla covered by yellow scales. Female genitalia. Anal papilla remarkably short; sterigma considerably wide; posterior apophysis round, 2 × larger than anal papilla; appendix bursae sclerotized, ⅓ × shorter than the corpus bursae; A8 membrane with a projection resembling small anal papilla.

Genetic characterization.

The minimum DNA barcode divergence is 4.28% compared to L. marmorifera .

Distribution.

The holotype, the only known specimen, was found in the cloud forest of southern Ecuador (Fig. 35 ).

Remarks.

Known only from the holotype, which has the tornus of the left forewing broken (Fig. 16 ), and the right forewing broken at cell R5. The DNA voucher label (Arcec 30166) is different from the voucher published at http://barcodinglife.com (Arcec 31097) probably by a confusion.

Figures

Figure 35. Distribution of examined specimens of Lafontaineana.

Figures 6 - 20. Adult habitus of Lichnoptera, Lafontaineana, and Panthea 6 Lichnoptera gulo, ♂, MGCL, Cundinamarca, Colombia 7 L. gulo, ♀, MGCL, Cundinamarca, Colombia 8 Lafontaineana marmorifera, ♂, MGCL, Cundinamarca, Colombia 9 L. marmorifera, ♀, MGCL, Cundinamarca, Colombia 10 L. imama, ♂, MGCL, holotype, Tolima, Colombia 11 L. imama, ♀, MGCL, paratype, Tolima, Colombia 12 L. puma, ♂, CNC, holotype, La Alegria, Ecuador 13 L. puma, ♀, CNC, paratype, La Alegria, Ecuador 14 L. thuta, ♂, MGCL, holotype, Loja, Ecuador 15 L. thuta, ♀, MGCL, paratype, Sucumbios, Ecuador 16 L. alexandrae, ♀, FSU, holotype, Zamora-Chinchipe, Ecuador 17 Panthea guatemala, ♂, CNC, San Lorenzo, Guatemala 18 P. hondurensis, ♂, MGCL, holotype, Francisco Morazan, Honduras 19 P. reducta, CNC, ♂, Pedernales, Dominican Republic 20 P. taina, ♂, La Vega, MGCL, holotype, Dominican Republic.

Figures 29 - 34. Female genitalia of Lichnoptera and Lafontaineana 29 Lichnoptera gulo, MGCL, Cundinamarca, Colombia 30 Lafontaineana alexandrae, FSU, holotype, Zamora-Chinchipe, Ecuador 31 L. imama, MGCL, paratype, Tolima, Colombia 32 L. marmorifera, MGCL, Cundinamarca, Colombia 33 L. puma, CNC, paratype, La Alegria, Ecuador 34 L. thuta, MGCL, paratype, Sucumbios, Ecuador.