Center for Systematic Entomology, Gainesville, Florida
Date of this Version
2-24-2022
Citation
Schnepp KE. 2022. A new species of Phyllophaga Harris (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) from Puerto Rico. Insecta Mundi 0914: 1–7.
Abstract
Phyllophaga bobevelynorum Schnepp, new species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae), is described from Puerto Rico. The species is illustrated and diagnosed, and a checklist of the species in Puerto Rico is given.
The genus Phyllophaga Harris is extremely diverse, with over 850 species currently assigned to it, all occurring in the New World. As with almost all Phyllophaga in the West Indies, this new species belongs to the subgenus Cnemarachis Saylor, whose members have the outer surface of the metatibia with an incomplete carina. As discussed by Smith and Paulsen (2015), this subgenus is endemic to the West Indies and has a near 100% rate of endemism on islands or clusters of islands (Woodruff and Sanderson 2005; Evans and Smith 2009). There are currently 11 described species of Phyllophaga from Puerto Rico. One of these, Phyllophaga apicalis (Blanchard, 1851), also occurs in the Virgin Islands, and another, Phyllophaga monana (Moser, 1921), only occurs on Mona Island. Many additional species await description, one of which was collected by Robert Woodruff during an expedition to Puerto Rico in 1993 and is described herein, bringing the total species in Puerto Rico to 12.
Comments
Copyright held by the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial License Published by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P.O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/