Description of the larvae of Faula jaliscoensis (Delgado & Navarrete-Heredia) (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) from Nayarit, Mexico

Abstract

The larvae of Faula jaliscoensis (Delagado & Navarette-Heredia, 2004) (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae: Macrodactylini) is described based in specimens collected in a sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum Linnaeus; Poaceae) field in Nayarit, Mexico. Diagnostic structures are illustrated and the differences between other described larvae of Faula Blanchard, 1850 are discussed. Faula was recently removed from synonymy with Ceraspis LePeletier & Serville, 1828 by Fuhrmann & Vaz-de-Mello (2017), with the following species occur in Mexico: Faula centralis (Sharp, 1877), F. jaliscoensis (Delagado & Navarette-Heredia, 2004), F. mexicana Harold, 1863, F. oaxacaensis (Delgado, 2001), and F. pilatei Harold, 1863 (Evans & Smith 2009). The objectives of this study are to describe the third instar of F. jaliscoensis and compare it with other described species of Faula in Mexico.

Morphology of a grass‐feeding white grub Apogonia cupreoviridis (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae: Diplotaxini) using scanning electron microscopy

“…In Melolonthinae, the plegmatia are commonly similar in widths (Böving, 1936;Ritcher, 1966) or slightly expanded apically in some Pseudosymmachia (Jia et al, 2020). In this study on A. cupreoviridis, the plegmatia are strongly expanded in the middle part, with the mesal margin arranged in a line, very similar to the larvae of A. rauca (Patil & Veeresh, 1984) and other species in Macrodactylini (Lugo-García et al, 2018), but different from the congeneric larvae of A. destructor (Bos, 1890). The biological functions of the plegmatia are still ambiguous and need further study.…”

“…The arrangements of palidia on raster vary greatly in Melolonthinae (Hayes, 1929; Ritcher, 1966; Zhang, 1984). The palidia consist of a single, transverse, slightly curved, com‐like row of flattened pali anterior to the ventral anal lobes in Sericini (Pardo‐Locarno et al, 2007; Šípek & Ahrens, 2011), two parallel rows in Pseudosymmachia (Jia et al, 2020) and Melolontha incana (Jia et al, 2021), distally divergent in some Brahmina (Jia et al, 2020), circular, convergent at both ends in some Macrodactylini (Lugo‐García et al, 2018; Neita‐Moreno et al, 2012) and absent in some Holotrichia and other species (Zhang, 1984). In the current study, the palidia of A. cupreoviridis consist of two rows of pali arranged in V‐shape, similar to the previously described species in Diplotaxini (Table 1), although the number of pali is quite different (Ferreira et al, 2018; Patil & Veeresh, 1984; Rodrigues, Fuhrmann, et al, 2017).…”