Oriental Chironomus: Einfeldia. pritiensis

Einfeldia pritiensis Singh & Rawal 2016

Singh & Rawal 2016b published a barcode sequence supposedly for this species, but that sequence corresponds to a species in BOLD Bin: BOLD:ACC5662
(see below)

Adult:

Male: (Holotype)
Length 4.5 mm. Wing length 3.4 mm. VR abt 0.91.
Head brown, thorax dark brown, abdomen pale brown.
Wings clear with dark veins.
Leg lengths and proportions (micron):

	Fe	Ti	Ta1	Ta2	Ta3	Ta4	Ta5	LR	F/T	Ta5/Ti
PI	1600	1280	1700	900	800	640	300	1.33	1.25	0.23
PII	1600	1500	700	500	400	280	200	0.47	1.07
PIII	1700	1700	1100	680	600	380?	200	0.65	1.00

Abdomen tapered. Hypopygium not clear from photograph or drawing. No setae can be seen on tergite IX, anal point narrow, perhaps narrower at base; Superior Volsella not described but appears to be long and sickle-shaped, base not visible; Inferior volsella long and clubbed, extending about to the sharp narrowing of the gonostylus.

Female - not described, but small photographs of the whole fly against a ruler (length appears about the same as for the male); the antenna; the seminal capsule (appears shaped like a wine glass); and the ventral posterior segments. The antennal proportions are approximately (units) 12 : 10 : 10.5 : 10 ; 17, AR abt. 0.4; A5/A1 abt 1.42.

Pupa: The pupa is illustrated by four small photographs, but the description is only that for a Chironomini pupa. It appears the thorax is dark brown and the abdomen yellow-brown. The exuvium is relatively dark. There is a well-developed spur on segment VIII, but it is not possible to determine the number of spines.

Fourth instar larva: In their Introduction, Singh & Rawal (2016a) note that they identified their species as an Einfeldia from the larval identification manual of Epler (2001), otherwise photographs of the mentum and mandibles; head, antenna, posterior part of larva, ventral tubules and setae on prolegs in Singh & Rawal (2016b). From these it can be determined that there is one pair of ventral tubules, anal gills short, about 2.5 times longer than wide.
Ventral head darkened on posterior half and width greater than the width of the mentum.
Given the identification from Epler, the fronto-clypeus presumably has a foramen.
Mentum apparently with 13 teeth although unclear if there are notches on the central tooth, but these can be lost due to wear.
Antenna with 5 segments, blade reaching to end of segment 5; AR perhaps 1.5.
Mandible with three dark teeth and a pale but relatively well separated fourth inner tooth (type IIIa?).

Cytology: No information

Found: INDIA: - Udaisagar lake, Udaipur, Rajasthan (Type locality)

Molecular sequence:
Singh & Rawal (2016c) obtained a COI barcode sequence, which they note is very close to Polypedilum. In fact it has better than 95% homology to an unnamed Polypedilum species in both GenBank and BOLD. :The most obvious explanation of this is that their sample contained both Einfeldia and Polypedilum specimens, and that a Polypedilum was accidentally chosen for the DNA extraction. This can be confirmed if there is a voucher available for examination.

This species is not ecessarily a new species, as it may have been described from elsewhere. Unfortunately this description is not sufficient to distinguish it from other species, and the inappropriate COI sequence does not help.

[ Return to Index | Go to References ]