Introduction
The genus Caloparyphus belongs to the subfamily Stratiomyinae and the tribe Oxycerini. James (1939) described it originally as a subgenus of Euparyphus Gerstaecker and later it was treated as a distinct genus by Quist and James (1973). Sinclair (1989) described madicolous larvae of C. greylockensis (Johnson, 1912) and C. tetraspilus (Loew, 1866), and added adult characters of some further species. Some species of Caloparyphus are still insufficiently known or based on the female holotypes with the relevant males described only superficially or not at all. Moreover, a precise identification is complicated by the known sexual dimorphism especially in the shape and the colour pattern of the head. According to the World Catalogue of the Stratiomyidae (Woodley 2001, 2011) twelve almost exclusively Nearctic species of Caloparyphus are known, with only C. decemmaculatus (Osten Sacken, 1886) penetrating into Mexico.
Recently we obtained males and females from Palaearctic Asia (Russian Kamchatka and Mongolia) that undoubtedly belong to Caloparyphus. They display all the main diagnostic characters of the genus (apical flagellomere style-like, antennal pedicel not elongated, scutellar spines separated by a distance as great as the length of spines, abdomen black with yellow oblique lateral spots on tergites 3 and 4, aedeagus tripartite distally). We can thus prove the occurrence of Caloparyphus in the Palaearctic Asia and describe a new species.
Methods
Part of the material was collected during the PIRE Mongolia project (http://mongolia.bio.upenn.edu), University of Pennsylvania (http://mongolia.bio.upenn.edu), and deposited in the collections of the Mongolian Aquatic Insect Survey (http://clade.acnatsci.org/mongolia) (Principal Investigator and Director of MAIS: Jon K. Gelhaus), the latter a project to document the Mongolian aquatic invertebrate diversity with respect to evolution, ecology and water quality (http://clade.ansp.org/entomology/mongolia/mais_home.html). More than 600 specimens of Mongolian Stratiomyidae have been examined and identified through the MAIS project and results are being prepared for publishing.
The notation in brackets for Arkhangai Mongolia paratypes refers to their map coordinates on the Mongolian national government topographic map 47T
The examined specimens were studied with Olympus and Nikon SMZ 1500 Stereomicroscopes. Photographs were taken through a Canon 450D and a Nikon DS-5M camera and were edited by CombineZ, Helicon Focus and Adobe Photoshop CS 4 software. The terminalia of the examined specimens were macerated in 10% KOH, rinsed with water and then preserved in glycerin and placed in a microvial on the specimen pin.
Morphological terminology follows that of McAlpine (1981) as modified by Cumming and Wood (2009). Body lengths are given exclusive of antennae.
Collection acronyms
ANSP The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
CSCACalifornia State Collection of Arthropods, Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, CA, USA
USNMDepartment of Entomology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA
Discussion
The species of the genus Caloparyphus were only revised by James (1939), when he erected “the species of Euparyphus related to crotchii” as a subgenus of Euparyphus. In that paper three species considered today part of the genus were not included: C. tetraspilus, C. atriventris (Coquillett, 1902), and C. greylockensis.
Of the twelve valid species of Caloparyphus (Woodley 2001) the following types have been examined by M. Hauser: C. currani (James, 1939), C. flaviventris (James, 1932), C. mariposa (James, 1939), and Norm Woodley: C. amplus (Coquillett, 1902), C. atriventris, C. crucigerus (Coquillett, 1902), and C. tahoensis Coquillett, 1902 (synonym to C. crucigerus). Most other species have been studied using specimens from several collections and comparing with the type series of the new species. The following differences might help in distinguishing this new Palaearctic species from the Nearctic species:
C. decemmaculatus: The scape and pedicel distinctly elongated and tergites 2–4 have central spots (this species might not belong into this genus);
C. tetraspilus has a black scutellum as well as four, two or no central spots on tergites 3-4 and no extended lateral markings on the tergites;
C. crotchi (Osten Sacken, 1877), C. flaviventris, C. major (Hine, 1901), C. mariposa and C. pretiosus (Banks, 1920) have the antennae distinctly longer than the head and vein R4 present;
C. greylockensis has no or very short vittae on the mesonotum;
C. crotchi has the scape twice as long as the pedicel, the mesonotal vittae ending at the suture and the male has the hind metatarsus at the apex enlarged;
C. amplus has the wing mainly bare (especially cell d) and vein R4 present;
C. atriventris, C. currani and C. crucigerus have the wing mainly bare, especially the discal cell which is devoid of microtrichia.
The species which seem to be most similar to C. palaearcticus sp. n. are the members of the crucigerus-group (C. crucigerus, C. atriventris, C. currani) and within it especially C. currani. But the yellow coloration of the face of these two species (Figs 11–12) is distinctly different. Although the extent of the yellow coloration shows variation in other species of this genus, it is constant in all the female paratypes of C. palaearcticus sp. n. and there is no other specimen known besides the female holotype for C. currani. The major differences next to the coloration of the head is that the apical half and most of the posterior portion of the wing in C. palaearcticus sp. n. (Fig. 10) is covered with microtrichia, especially the discal cell and cell r4+5, the apical part of cell br and the apical half of cell cup, with most of these areas bare in C. currani (Fig. 9). The dark coloration on the femora and the apical segments of the tarsi are much darker in C. palaearcticus sp. n. (Figs 1, 7) than in C. currani.
It is remarkable that there is no other specimen of C. currani found so far except the holotype. The holotype might be just a large specimen of another described species in the crucigerus-group. The Nearctic species of the crucigerus-group need to be revised, as there are several potential new species, one in southern California, and one in Canada, and the status of C tahoensis, which is currently a synonym of C. crucigerus, should be reexamined. But this is beyond the scope of this publication, in which we wanted show that the only Palaearctic species is distinct from all described Nearctic taxa.
This disjunct distribution of Caloparyphus palaearcticus sp. n. is similar to other insects found in northern Mongolia and the Russian Far East. For example, Gelhaus and Podenas (2006) in a study of crane flies (Tipuloidea) from the same Lake Hövsgöl watershed noted that those species with a disjunct distribution in northern Mongolia and the Russian Far East comprised 9.4% of the total crane fly fauna, or 8 out of 85 species found. A similar disjunction was again recently noted where a new species was found in the crane fly genus Heterangeus in northern Mongolia (Hentiy mountains); the genus was known previously only from the Russian Far East, Korean peninsula and Japan (Podenas, Podeniene and Gelhaus, 2014).