Anchitrichia palmatiloba Flint 1991

Anchitrichia palmatiloba

This species is most closely related to A. duplifurcata Flint which is known from Brazil and Paraguay. In the latter species there is a slender process from the mesal margin of the eighth sternum, the long, lateral processes are deeply divided, each branch being bilobed at its apex, and the subgenital plate is troughlike with a ventral beak. In A. palmatiloba there is no mesal process from the eighth sternum, the lateral processes are divided near their apices in a half dozen shorter lobes, and the subgenital plate bears a dorsolateral process.

ADULT.—Length of forewing, 4–5 mm. Color fuscous with lineate green stripes; head with green hairs, fuscous dorsomesally, mesothorax dorsally fuscous with dorsolateral and mesal green stripes; antennae green, annulate; legs mostly fuscous with green fringes, tarsi annulate; forewing fuscous with longitudinal green stripes, fringe mostly fuscous. Male genitalia: Seventh sternum with a projecting mesal process. Eighth sternum with a long posterolateral process whose apex is divided into 6 shorter processes each tipped by a short dark seta; posteromesal margin deeply emarginate, within emargination is a large rectanguloid plate. Ninth tergum almost quadrate in lateral aspect with a short posterolateral lobe bearing many setae, and a dorsomesal area with setae. Subgenital plate with ventral surface only slightly produced, apex slightly bilobed in ventral aspect, dorsolaterally with a semi-erect, pointed process. Clasper curved in lateral aspect, almost C-shaped, with a row of short dark spines on its ventromesal margin. Phallus with usual basal tube, loop, and midlength complex; apical section troughlike, more strongly sclerotized laterally and ventrally, membranous mesally.

MATERIAL.—Holotype, male: COLOMBIA. DPTO. ANTIOQUIA: Río Aurrá, km 50, E San Jerónimo, 14 Feb 1983, O.S. Flint, Jr. USNM Type.

Paratypes: Same data as holotype, 1. ECUADOR. PCIA. COTOPAxi: 36 km NE Quevedo, 1100 ft (~330 m), 21 July 1976, J. Cohen, 1. PCIA. PASTAZA: Estación Fluviométrica, 27 km N Puyo, 4 Feb 1976, Spangler et al., 3. 5 km S Puyo, 14 May 1977, Spangler and Givens, 2. VENEZUELA. EDO. ZULIA: Misión El Tucuco, Río El Tucuco, ½ km from Perijo El Tucuco, 1–5 Oct 1979, H.M. Savage, 1, 3.

The region has proven to have an unexpected diversity of species, all of the new species were active in the day and were taken by net. They belong to the melleopicta group, only L. fairchildi Flint being in the pictipes group, and bring to 16 the number of described species in the genus. Species of the genus are known from the northern United States south to Colombia and Venezuela as well as the West Indies.

The larvae, which live in flowing water, have been described several times (Flint, 1970; Wiggins, 1977). The first 4 instars are free living and quickly completed. At the fifth instar the larva constructs a silken shelter within which it lives and increases greatly in size, feeding by extending its foreparts from openings in either end of the case. They feed on the periphyton and debris on the rock around the shelter.