Somogyi Múzeumok Közleményei 18. (Kaposvár, 2008)

ÁBRAHÁM LEVENTE: Ascalaphid Studies VI. New genus and species from Asia with comments on genus Suhpalacsa (Neuroptera: Ascalaphidae)

Somogyi Múzeumok Közleményei 18: 69-76 Kaposvár, 2008 Ascalaphid Studies VI. New genus and species from Asia with comments on genus Suhpalacsa (Neuroptera: Ascalaphidae) LEVENTE ABRAHAM Somogy County Museum, Natural History Department, H-7400 Kaposvár, P.O. Box 70, Hungary, e-mail: labraham@smmi.hu ÁBRAHÁM, L: Ascalaphid Studies VI. New genus and species from Asia with comments on genus Suhpalacsa (Neuroptera: Ascalaphidae). Abstract: A new genus, Maezous gen. n. and two new species Maezous tomijankae sp. n. from Laos and Maezous harisi sp. n. from Borneo are described. The new genus is separated from genus Suhpalacsa. Their distribution and morphological differences are discussed. With 10 figures. Keywords: Ascalaphidae, Suhpalacsa, Acheron, new genus, new species, Asia, Laos, Malaysia, Borneo Introduction Ascalaphid species are larger neuropteroid insects living mainly in the tropical and subtropical area. They reach their highest diversity in the hot evolutionary spots like South America, Africa and the lndo-Malaysian archipelago. The high number islands of the Indonesian and Malaysian region resulted high diversity in the local fauna as it discussed in NEW (2003), titled "The Neuroptera ofMalesia". In this monograph, he provided key for all ascalaphid genera of the lndo-Malaysian region with short comments on their taxonomy and nomenclature. Furthermore, in the checklist part of this monograph, he listed 40 ascalaphid species of 2 subfamilies. We also noticed, Idricerus obscurus (Westwood, 1848) (East India) is not a member of subfamily Haplogleniinae as NEW (2003) supposed that based on VAN DER WEELE'S (1909) classification. Taxonomical status of subfamily Ascalaphinae was verified by NEEDHAM (1909) later due to homonymy (OSWALD and PENNY 1991) this species was placed into the genus Stylascalaphus (SZIRÁKI 1998) as Stylascalaphus obscurus (Westwood, 1848). The genera Suphalomitus Van der Weele, 1909 and Suhpalacsa Lefébvre, 1842 were previously studied by NEW (1984, 2003), SEKIMOTO and YOSHIZAWA (2007) and WANG et al. (2008). Species of these genera distributed from Pakistan to New Caledonia shall be revised separately. This paper is a part of a series discussing species descriptions and revisions of Ascalaphidae species worldwide (ÁBRAHÁM and MÉSZÁROS 2006). Here, we describe two new ascalaphid species, one from Laos and the other one from Borneo. Taxonomical part Maezous gen. nov. Type species Maezous princeps (Gerstaecker, 1893) comb. n. DESCRIPTION Slender, medium or large sized insects. Head as wide as thorax. Eyes equally divided. Vertex with long soft hairs. Antenna slightly longer than half distance between base of forewing and pterostigma. Flagellar segments subequal, bare. Club subglobular-shaped with verticils. Thorax with moderately dense hairs. Fore and hindwings long, elongately oval and subequal with acute or rounded apex. Anterior and posterior margins of wings unparallel. Anal area of forewing obtusely angled. Pterostigma rhomboid-shaped, longer than wide. Apical area beyond vein Sc+R with three rows of cells. Legs slender. Tarsi as long as tibiae. Tarsal segments 1-4 equal; segment 5 as long as segments 1-4 combined. Abdomen in female, shorter than wings. Abdominal segment 2 short. Male ectoprocts with pair of convex plate with shorter or longer appendices. DIAGNOSIS From morphological point of view, McLachlan's opinion (1873) shall be accepted whereas the distribution of genus Suhpalacsa is restricted to Australia. Although, he placed several species living in the continental Africa and Malaysian archipelago into this genus. Earlier, the genus Suhpalacsa was a large genus containing 85 names and 50-60 valid species from nearly all continents. By now, most of the species were separated from genus Suhpalacsa. In America, all former Suhpalacsa species belong to genera Ameropterus Esben-Petersen, 1922, Amoea Lefébvre, 1842, Ascalorphe Banks, 1915, Cordulocerus Rambur, 1842 and Ululodes Currie in Smith, 1900. In Africa, 11 Suhpalacsa species were described. By now, most of them belong to genera Dicolpus Gerstaecker, 1885 and Disparomitus Van der Weele, 1909 or undescribed genera (designed but later not described eg. imparomitus abdominalis McLachlan) by TJEDER (1992) except Suhpalacsa ambiguus Navás, 1914 from Cameroon that should be revised in the future. Suhpalacsa cephalotes