The family Dermestidae (Coleoptera: Bostrichoidea) contains about 1440 species and subspecies worldwide (Háva 2003a, Háva and Solervicens 2012). Its members are “mainly scavengers on dried proteinaceous material and are of economic importance because the family includes species that are pests of stored products or natural-history enemies” (Lawrence and Ślipiński 2005). Despite their species richness, only 14 species have been reported from Angola hitherto (Erichson 1843, Ferreira 1965, Háva 2003a, b, Kadej 2006, 2010, Mroczkowski 1968, Pacavira et al. 2006, Pic 1931, 1937). This doubtlessly small number is perhaps largely due to the 27 years of Angolan civil war (1975–2002) which was a serious impediment to entomological research; the actual number of species is undoubtedly much higher. After the end of the conflict, and especially in the recent years, specialists carrying out entomological research seem to be returning to Angola. The genus Phradonoma Jacquelin du Val, 1859 is distributed largely in Palaearctic and Afrotropical regions and one species has been introduced into the U.S.A. In this contribution to the taxonomy of Angolan Dermestidae (Coleoptera) we describe one new species of Phradonoma and provide a summary of the dermestid taxa occurring there.

The type specimen of this new species has been collected using flight intercept trap in open savannah near Catabola, in the central Angolan province of Bié, in altitude 1300 m. The FIT trap has been placed near a small pond, and cow dung, rotting bananas as well as rotting fish were all used to attract insects. The attractants were placed in small plastic containers around the trap. When removing the male terminalia from the specimen, the entire abdomen was first severed from the rest of the body, subsequently macerated in KOH heated up to 90°C for a short while, cleared in 96% ethanol and thence the male genitalia was removed from the cleared abdomen. The habitus photographs of Phradonoma blabolili was taken by macroscope Leica 216 APO. The dissected male genitalia was macerated in 10 % solution of KOH heated up to 90 °C for a few minutes, cleared in Xylene and transferred into glycerin in small glass dish where it was observed. The photograph of the male genitalia has been taken with Olympus BX 41 camera. The map on Fig. 5 depicting the type locality of Phradonoma blabolili was downloaded from the Internet and subsequently re-drawn using Adobe Illustrator CS4. The type specimen is deposited in the collection of the senior author (JHAC).

Standard measurements have been made according to Háva (2006) and are as follows:

BL Body length - linear distance measured from anterior margin of pronotum to apex of elytra;

BW Body width - measured between two anterolateral humeral calli;

PL Pronotum length - measured from the top of the anterior margin to scutellum;

PW Pronotum width - measured between the two posterior angles of pronotum;

EL Elytral length- linear distance measured from shoulder to apex of elytron.