A new species of Acanthoscelides Schilsky (Coleoptera: Bruchidae) from Mexico with some biological notes

Abstract

497Acanthoscelides Schilsky is the largest genus of Bruchidae of the New World containing about 340 species, however there are more than 200 species remaining to be described (Johnson 1990 According to Johnson (1990) Acanthoscelides is characterized by following combination of characters: antenna short to long, sexually dimorphic or not; pronotum conical, campaniform; elytra about twice as long as broad, striae moderately to deeply impressed; hind femur usually expanded medially to about width of or wider than width of hind coxa, armed with large subapical acuminate spine followed by none to four smaller spines, mucro 0.05-1.0 times as long as tarsomere 1; abdomen usually with sterna unmodifi ed, pygidium ranging from evenly rounded to strongly convex, apical margin of last sternum slightly to strongly emarginate to receive apex of pygidium, apical margin of last sternum of female usually without emargination; male genitalia usually without dorsal hood at apex, armature of internal sac ranging from only a lining of spicules to large spines; lateral lobes cleft for a part of their length.However Johnson (1990) recognized that the genus often is used as a genus into which species are placed that do not fi t within the limits of other genera. In order to partly solve this problem Johnson and Romero (2006) created a new genus, Neobruchidius, transferring to it seven Acanthoscelides with metafemur armed with one large subapical acuminate spine, with no additional smaller spines. So the character quoted by Johnson (1990) to describe Acanthoscelides "metafemur armed with large subapical acuminate spine followed by none to four smaller spines" should be changed to "metafemur armed with large subapical acuminate spine followed by two to four smaller spines".The last species of Acanthoscelides decribed from Mexico was in 1990 by Johnson in his work "Systematics of the Seed Beetle genus Acanthoscelides (Bruchidae) of Northern South America". After 17 years a new species of this genus from Mexico is here described including a new host plant record. Material and MethodsMethods adopted in this paper to prepare genitalia were those of Kingsolver (1970) and Kingsolver and Whitehead (1974); for interpretation of genitalia of Romero and Johnson (1999), and for terminology and taxonomic characters of Johnson (1983Johnson ( , 1990

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“…Several literature on this genus were puplished in different regions of the world (e.g. Bousquet, 1990;Johnson, 1990;Kingsolver, 2004;Wu et al, 2007;Vassiliou and Papadoulis, 2008;Nápoles and Kingsolver, 2009;Thakur, 2012a &b;Thakur and Kalpna, 2015).…”