Pothea ventralis (Lepeletier & Serville, 1825)

Pothea ventralis (Lepeletier & Serville, 1825) View in CoL

Figs. 3B, C View FIGURE 3

Distribution: Described from French Guiana (Cayenne), and recorded subsequently from Guyana, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, and Argentina ( Dougherty 1995; Maldonado 1990). It is a new record from Colombia.

Remarks: Amyot & Serville (1843) proposed the genus Pothea to include two species, P. frontalis (Lepeletier & Serville, 1825) and P. ventralis . Wygodzinsky (1949a) subsequently designated P. ventralis as the type species of Pothea . Despite being the type species of the genus, surprisingly very little has been documented for this species; for instance, Forthman & Weirauch (2016) illustrated the limited sexual dimorphism of this species, but not much else has been documented. Pothea ventralis is very similar to P. haglundii Stål, 1872 in their body coloration, particularly the black thoracic sternites and pleurites, but can be differentiated by the relatively small ocelli of P. ventralis ( Dougherty 1980) . The examined females ( Fig. 2B View FIGURE 2 ) agree with Dougherty (1995) in its head structure. Carpintero (1978) showed that the median process of the pygophore of the male genitalia was different among very similar species of Pothea . Further studies should document the male genitalia of P. ventralis to help in its delimitation.

The record of Fracker and Bruner (1924) of P. ventralis from Peru is probably a misidentification. They described the connexivum as having the first five segments black and the rest red, thus, probably corresponding to some other species of Pothea .

Examined material: COLOMBIA. Cund[inamarca]: 1 ♀, Tame , Olga V. Castaño, 5.viii.1970, ICN 029270 ( ICN); Meta: 1 ♀, Acacias, vereda la Esmeralda , centro agroturistico Araguaney , 17.iv.2004, E. Florez y estudiantes sistematica animal, ICN 037890 ( ICN) .