A new species of genus Pseudaspidapion Wanat, 1990 (Coleoptera, Apionidae) from China

Abstract Pseudaspidapion botanicum sp. n. from China is described and figured. Its host plant is Grewia biloba G. Don var. parviflora (Bunge) Hand.-Mazz (Malvaceae: Grewioideae). The genus Harpapion Voss, 1966 is recorded as new for China and Vietnam and two comb. n. are proposed: Harpapion vietnamense (Korotyaev, 1985) (from Aspidapion) and Harpapion coelebs (Korotyaev, 1987) (from Pseudaspidapion). A key to the known species of the genus Pseudaspidapion from China is presented.


Introduction
M. Wanat (1990) erected the genus Pseudaspidapion relating it to the genus Aspidapion Schilsky, 1901. Alonso-Zarazaga andLyal (1999) placed it in the tribe Aspidapiini Alonso-Zarazaga, 1990 of the subfamily Apioninae Schoenherr, 1823 (Coleoptera, Curculionoidea). This genus is quite similar to Aspidapion, but it can be distinguished from the latter by relatively equal width of elytral striae and interstriae, the presence of fenestrae in the tegminal plate, and the absence of protibial mucrones in males, among other features (Wanat 1990). Apart from the type species, Apion spadiceum Wagner, 1908, Wanat also proposed 15 new combinations for species coming from East Africa, India and South China. At present, there are 17 paleotropical species included in the genus. In the Chinese fauna, there were 4 species recorded only from Yunnan province, and these specimens were all collected during the 1950's (Korotyaev 1985(Korotyaev , 1987.
In 2008, we collected a series of specimens of a Pseudaspidapion. Further specimens were later found. We consider them to represent a species new to science that we describe below.
In addition to the description of the adult characters, we also provide some biological data for the new species after one year of survey in the Beijing area.

Material and methods
Materials examined of new species for this study are to be deposited in the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (IZCAS), the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid (MNCN), the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow (ZIN), the Museum of Natural History, University of Wrocław (MNHW) and the Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing (BBG).
Type specimens were obtained from ZIN on loan or belong to IZCAS and their data are summarised in Table 1. Information about their condition and taxonomy is given in the Discussion section.
Descriptions were made and photographs were taken with a CCD Qimagine Mi-croPublisher 5.0 RTV mounted on a Zeiss SteREO Discovery V.12. Extended focus images were generated with Auto-Montage Pro 5.03.0061 and edited with Adobe Photoshop CS 5.0 if required. Microscopic slides were studied under a Leica DM 2500 microscope and photos were taken with a Nikon CoolPix 5400. The map was made with the software ArcGIS 9.3. Drawings were made from the original photographs by using the software Adobe Illustrator CS5.0, or directly by using a drawing tube linked to the microscope.
The dissecting method used follows Alonso-Zarazaga (1990). Abdomens were put into 10% NaOH for several hours until the inner tissues were digested, and the resultant structures were placed on a temporary microscope slide for examination.
After description, the genitalia and other parts of each specimen were placed in DMHF on a plastic card for long term conservation (Steedman 1958;Bameul 1990).
Labels are described as they are (in Chinese), with pinyin romanization or comments in square brackets; labels are separated by semicolons and lines by slashes.
Rostrum cylindrical and moderately robust, in dorsal view 4.18× as long as maximum width, 1.45× as long as pronotum in midline, widest at mesorostrum, pro-and metarostrum with sides almost parallel, metarostrum with two very fine, punctulate dorsal submedial sulci shortened at mesorostral level, and two weak dorsal sublateral sulci, dorsal submedial sulci prolonged on frons, separated, dorsal sublateral sulci prolonged close to ocular margins, metarostrum microreticulate, matt, pro-and mesorostrum smooth, shining, sparsely punctulate; in lateral view weakly and evenly curved, ventral margin forming a weak angle at mesorostrum, each side with a very thin low dorsal sublateral keel running from front margin of eye to upper margin of scrobe and beyond, limiting ventrally the dorsal sublateral sulcus, prorostrum with a marked ventral sublateral sulcus under this keel.
Head transverse, frons weakly convex with four rows of relatively deep punctures running from metarostrum and hardly surpassing hind margin of eyes, occiput almost reaching hind eye level, subocular keel reaching middle of eyes, the area between subocular keels microreticulate and impunctate, with a low, fine median keel. Eyes round, moderately convex.
Pronotum campaniform, transverse, 0.83× as long as wide, widest just behind middle, constrictions weak, sides weakly dilated at middle, base 1.31× as wide as apex, bisinuate with moderate medial rounded projection towards scutellum, basal flange moderately developed. Prescutellar fovea shallow, as broad as one puncture's diameter, as long as 2-3 diameters, prolonged in a very fine sulcus reaching middle of pronotum. Discal punctures relatively deep, ca. 0.5-1× diameter apart, interspaces slightly convex, microreticulate. Scutellum large, elongated, triangular, 1.63× as long as wide, with two basal tubercles separated by a weak median depression, in lateral view subacutely prominent, in front view tubercles fused basally; apex constricted and moderately raised, distinctly visible in lateral view.

Discussion
During this research, we were able to study types of several of the species placed in the genera Pseudaspidapion and Aspidapion in China in the recent Palaearctic catalogue (Alonso-Zarazaga 2011) (table 1). Until now, females of P. coelebs and A. vietnamense are unknown, and the same can be said of the males of P. kryzhanovskii and A. panfilovi. We found that the holotype (and only known specimen) of Aspidapion vietnamense, which has been previously dissected and whose pygidium and tegmen were not conserved, shows several differences from Aspidapion, namely, the metatibial mucros are evidently elongate and knicked at their apices (subdentate at the outer margin), the rostrum is clearly dilated at the antennal insertion and distinctly constricted apicad, the setae on the front margin of pronotum are parallel to it, and the apex of the penis is distinctly curved in lateral view, dorsally dentate near the apex. All these characters suggest it is a Harpapion Voss, 1966. After a study of the type species of this genus, Harpapion considerandum (Fåhraeus, 1871), we consider that, even in the absence of these diagnostic parts, it can be unmistakeably considered a member of this genus and consequently is here transferred: Harpapion vietnamense (Korotyaev), comb. n. The same can be said about Pseudaspidapion coelebs (Korotyaev, 1987), which show also the characters of the latter genus, and is here formally transferred as well: Harpapion coelebs (Korotyaev, 1987), comb. n. This genus will be the subject of a forthcoming paper.
The systematic placement of A. inarmatum is unclear at the moment, but it belongs neither to Aspidapion nor to Pseudaspidapion or Harpapion.
Aspidapion panfilovi, known from females until now, possesses several coincident characters with some Pseudaspidapion: its more elongate and apparently glabrous elytra, the shallow striae with interstriae about twice as broad as striae on the disc of the elytra, etc. Although it resembles the female of P. zagulajevi very much, we think it is better to postpone any decision on its placement until the male is discovered. This highlights the difficulty of placing in their correct genera the species of Apionidae described only from females, a practice that should be avoided, as that of designating females as name bearing types.
Previously, the genus Pseudaspidapion was not known to exceed the Tropic of Cancer. However, the new species P. botanicum reaches 40ºN latitude, an area clearly belonging to the Eastern Palaearctic region (Fig. 34). Thus this genus shows a broader distributional range extending from the Afrotropical across the Oriental to the Palaearctic region. On the other hand, we identified in the collection of IZCAS several specimens of Aspidapion validum (Germar, 1817), from Altay prefecture in northern Xinjiang (China). Apart from the species Aspidapion panfilovi, whose placement may need a revision as mentioned above, these specimens represent the easternmost distribution record of the otherwise Western Palaearctic genus Aspidapion. Therefore, the distribution pattern of Pseudaspidapion is mainly Palaeotropical but has expanded to Philippines (Wanat 1990) and to North China while Aspidapion is distributed in the Palaearctic region but has also expanded to northeast tropical Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia). The two genera can still be distinctly separated from each other. Also, we suppose that the blank distributional area of Pseudaspidapion between Shaanxi and South China represents a lack of collection records rather than an actual distributional range limit, because the vegetation between these two points includes most of the range of G. biloba (which includes also Korea) and many other congeneric species of the host genus.
Some of these species are described only from one sex, which makes it difficult to key all of the Chinese species. However, we have tried to provide a key to the known Chinese species (see below). Consequently, more field work is needed to gather specimens of both sexes, and complete our knowledge. We have not studied specimens of P. rufopiceum (Wagner, 1909), a related species, which is included below from the data in its original description. viding the brush-pencil Plug-ins of Adobe Illustrator. We also thank two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions considerably improved our work. This research has been supported by an Invited Professor Award (2009) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to the senior author and by project grant CGL2010-15786 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain).