Miccolamia albosetosa Gressitt, 1951

Map 1 incertae sedis Chinese common name: 白毛小沟胫天牛

Miccolamia albosetosa Gressitt, 1951: 533. Type locality: Shinsui (= Shenshui, Gaoxiong City), Taiwan.

Miccolamia albosetosa: Breuning 1963: 490; Hua 2002: 216.

Miccolamia (Miccolamia) albosetosa: Breuning 1975: 52, 53; Löbl and Smetana 2010: 224; Lin and Yang 2019: 260; Danilevsky 2020: 315.

Original description.

“ Subrobusta, postice attenuatis; prothorace breve tuberculatis, haud constrietis; elytris attenuatis, basi subcristatis; corporis parce albo setosis. Long. 3.25 mm.; lat. 1.2. ”

Male (?): Dark pitchy brown; reddish on antennae and paler reddish brown on bases of proximal segments; somewhat reddish on antennal supports, tarsi and bases of tibiae. Body irregularly and very thinly clothed with adpressed pale pubescence, and with scattered suberect pale hairs of mediocre length, whitish on sides of body and appendages, brownish on dorsum.

Head about as broad as prothorax, very finely punctured, feebly concave between antennal insertions; frons nearly twice as wide as high; inferior eye-lobe rounded-triangular, slightly deeper than gena below it. Antennae nearly one-third longer than body, moderately slender; scape feebly swollen, as long as third segment; fourth slightly longer than third; fifth fully as long as third; remainder decreasing slightly. Prothorax subcylindrical, slightly widened and briefly tuberculate at middle of each side. slightly narrowed basally; disc subevenly swollen on central portion, very slightly raised on each side of center, very finely punctured. Scutellum subtriangular. Elytra very slightly narrowed to behind middle, then more strongly narrowed and internally subobliquely truncate; disc of each with a blunt subbasal crest and with fine uneven puncturation, in part arranged in one or two partial rows near center of disc. Ventral surfaces distinctly punctured. Femora clavate.

HOLOTYPE: Male (?) (Taiwan Agric. Res. Inst.), Shinsui, Formosa, March 25, 1940.

Remarks.

The holotype of this species could not be located in TARI (Yu-Long Lin pers. comm., 2023) and no additional material was available for this study. According to the original description, this species is characterized by the antennae nearly one-third longer than the body; antennomere III slightly shorter than IV, equal in length to V; pronotum feebly tuberculate laterally and weakly constricted behind the lateral tubercles; pronotal disk very slightly raised on each side of center; elytral apices internally subobliquely truncate; and each elytron bearing only one blunt subbasal tubercle.

According to Gressitt’s data, the holotype exhibits an unusually short body proportion (BL / BW = 2.7), deviating significantly from the range observed in currently studied species (BL / BW = 2.9–3.6). It is unclear whether this represents a genuine morphological difference or a measurement inaccuracy. Furthermore, the distinctive antennal characteristics (proportions of antennomeres III – V combined with exceptional length) show no congruence with any documented Miccolamia species (Hasegawa and N. Ohbayashi, 2001; present study, etc.), but instead demonstrate remarkable similarity to certain members of the genus Rhopaloscelis Blessig, 1872, such as R. maculatus Bates, 1877 from Japan.

Given the absence of critical diagnostic characters in the original description, particularly regarding metatibial morphology, this species is treated here as of uncertain generic position. Further examination of the holotype or topotypes is necessary to confirm its generic placement.

Distribution.

China: Taiwan.