Meccus pallidipennis Stal

Meccus pallidipennis Stål

(Fig. 4)

Meccus pallidipennis Stål 1872, p. 110. Type-locality: “ Mexico ” (without specific locality).

Diagnosis. Adult body length 30–35mm. Body wide, especially abdomen with ground color from dark brown to black. Setae of dorsal surface numerous and short. Head slightly longer than pronotum. Anteocular region three times as long as postocular. First antennal segment extending beyond level of apex of clypeus. First rostral segment reaching level of apex of antenniferous tubercle, second extending to level of hind border of head. Pronotum strongly constricted at level of transverse sulci, not granulose but with short setae. Hemelytra and wings leaving urotergites exposed; corium with numerous short setae, most of its surface yellowish white, connexivum wide and black, connexival plates posteriorly with orange-red spots of varied size (Lent & Wygodzinsky 1979).

Distribution. Mexico (Colima, Estado de México, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Puebla, Querétaro, Veracruz and Zacatecas) (Zárate & Zárate 1985, Ibáñez-Bernal & Paz 1998, Vidal- Acosta et al. 2000, Galvão et al. 2003, Salazar-Schettino et al. 2010).

Records in Veracruz. Municipality of San Andrés Tuxtla, Estación de Biología Tropical “Los Tuxtlas”, and Municipality of La Antigua.

Comments. Historically there are only two records of M. pallidipennis in the state of Veracruz. The first was a female collected and studied by H. Brailovsky in 1973 from San Andrés Tuxtla (Zárate & Zárate 1985), and the second a male collected by the State Health Service in 1997 from the municipality of La Antigua (Vidal-Acosta et al. 2000). Nevertheless, both apparently correspond to casual records probably as a consequence of human displacement from areas of normal distribution of this species to those localities, as no other records were made by the continuous surveillance efforts of health personnel. The Meccus (formerly the Triatoma phyllosoma complex) to which pallidipennis is assigned, is widely distributed in western and central Mexico, where M. pallidipennis is abundant inside houses and shows high T. cruzi infection rates, with marked mammalian preference as hosts (Zárate & Zárate 1985, Martínez-Ibarra et al. 2008).

Material examined. 1 Ƥ: México, Veracruz, San Andrés Tuxtla, 18.45°N, – 95.212°W. 300 msnm, 1973-7-28, H. Brailovsky. IBUNAM: CNIN:HEM-sn95. H. Brailovsky det.