Journal of
Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 June 2018 | 10(7):
11988–11991
First record of a trogid beetle (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea:Trogidae) from the Western Ghats, India
Aparna Sureshchandra Kalawate 1 & S.S. Patole2
1 Zoological Survey of India, Western
Regional Centre, Vidhya Nagar, Sector-29, P.C.N.T.
(PO), Rawet Road, Akurdi, Pune,
Maharashtra 411044, India
2 Sitaram Govind Patil Arts, Science and Commerce College, Sakri, Dhule, Maharashtra 424304,
India
1 devarpanento@gmail.com (corresponding
author), 2 sspatole63@gmail.com
doi: http://doi.org/10.11609/jott.3951.10.7.11988-11991 | ZooBank:urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:3B4BF797-968A-43A5-83D2-3EC6607B43A8
Editor: Anonymity
requested. Date of publication: 26
June 2018 (online & print)
Manuscript details: Ms# 3951 | Received 08 December 2017 | Final received 07 May 2018 | Finally
accepted 25 May 2018
Citation: Kalawate, A.S. & S.S. Patole (2018). First record
of a trogid beetle (Coleoptera:Scarabaeoidea: Trogidae)
from the Western Ghats, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 10(7): 11988–11991; http://doi.org/10.11609/jott.3951.10.7.11988-11991
Copyright: © Kalawate & Patole 2018. Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License. JoTTallows unrestricted use of this article in any medium, reproduction and
distribution by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of
publication.
Funding: None.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: The authors are
grateful to the Director, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata and the
Officer-in-Charge, WRC, ZSI, Pune for facilities and
encouragement. Thanks are extended to Riccardo Pittino,
Natural History Museum of Milan, Italy and Werner Strumpher,
Agricultural Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa for help in confirmation
of identification. Authors are grateful to Ales Bezdek,
Biology Centre CAS, Institute of Entomology, Branišovská 31, CZ-370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic for providing the
relevant literature.
Trogidae is a small,
cosmopolitan family consisting of about 300 species (Scholtz1986a; Smith 2003; Pittino 2006; Zidek2013, 2017). The
family name Trogidae was proposed by MacLeay (1819). Trogid beetles are commonly called hide
beetles (Houston 2010), and keratin beetles (Strümpheret al. 2014). The beetles of this
family are necrophagous (Scholtz1986b) and are of forensic importance. These insects utilize a wide array of food containing keratinous
material. They feed on carcasses
and are the last among other groups of organisms to feed on the carcass. They have been reported feeding on bat
guano in caves, locust eggs, fly maggots and also on
products which contain animal keratin, like an old carpet, coat, etc. (Scholtz 1986b).
These are the only members of this type of feeding
habit (keratinophagous) from Scarabaeoidea. Adults lay eggs in soil under the food
source. The larvae feed on that
food source after hatching. The
larva completes three instars in about four weeks, it stops feeding and prepares
a light cocoon of agglutinated soil, where the pupation takes place (Verdugo 2014), and pupates for about two weeks.
Many adults of this family are attracted to light at
night. Trogidsare considered primitive in the superfamily Scarabaeoidea(Crowson 1954, 1981). The insects of this family are of
forensic importance, and are being utilized to estimate post-mortem intervals
in legal investigations of the human body (Tabor et al. 2004). India harbours a very rich Trogidae fauna, but work carried out on this family is less
in comparison to other parts of the world. The Oriental trogid fauna
was studied by a few researchers (Blackburn 1904; Arrow 1927; Haaf 1954a,b; Scholtz 1980,
1986b, 1990; Pittino 2005) and the world trogid fauna was catalogued by Zidek(2013, 2017).
It includes five genera viz. Trox Fabricius, 1775; Polynoncus Burmeister, 1876; Omorgus Erichson, 1847; Glyptotrox Nikolaev, 2016 and Phoberus Macleay, 1819 (Zidek2017). The first trogid was described and named as Scarabaeus sabulosus Linnaeus 257 years back (Strümpher et al. 2016). The subfamily Omorginae Nikolajev, 2005 is monophyletic, and the members of
this subfamily have elongated antennal scape and the metatibialspur is as long as the first two tarsomeres (Strümpher et al. 2016). As per Strümpheret al. (2016), Afromorgus was described as a
sub-genus of Omorgus by Scholtz (1986a), which was elevated to the genus level by Pittino (2006), but again considered as a subgenus of Omorgus (see Zidek2013). At present, 13 species of Trogidae are known from India (Zidek2013, 2017) (Table 1). The present
study documents the occurrence of the trogid beetle
from Maharashtra for the first time (Table 1), they have been reported from the
other parts of India. As mentioned
earlier, the work on this family of beetles of forensic importance is
negligible in India. The objective
of the present study is to provide a new distributional record of Omorgus (Afromorgus) italicus.
The material (single male) was collected from Sakri Taluka, DhuleDistrict, Maharashtra, India, by the second author. The specimen was brought to the
laboratory, dried and pinned. The
dried specimen was studied under Leica EZ 4 HD stereozoommicroscope. The identification was
done with the help of relevant literature (Haaf 1954a;Reiche 1853; Scholtz 1986b,
1990). The structure of the
genitalia was compared with the line diagram of genitalia given by Haaf (1954a). The terminology used for describing morphological features and male
genitalia follows Scholtz (1986b, 1990). The identified specimen was labeled, duly registered and deposited in the collection of
Zoological Survey of India, Western Regional Centre, Pune,
Maharashtra, India (ZSI-WRC-ENT-1/2638). The known distribution of this species was verified from the checklist
of the world Trogidae (Zidek2013, 2017). The survey locality
has been mentioned under material examined and also shown in Fig. 1. The survey locality map was prepared
using the open-free access QGIS software.
Male aedeagus was dissected
from the abdomen and kept in 10% KOH solution (at room temperature) for 30
minutes for softening of the sclerotized portion. The specimens were studied, photographed
and measured using a Leica EZ 4 HD stereozoommicroscope with Leica application suite, Version 3.0.0.
Systematic account of the species along with material
examined, description and distribution in India as well as outside India with
the description of male genitalia are discussed and illustrated here.
Systematic account
Order Coleoptera Linnaeus, 1758
Suborder: Polyphaga Emery, 1886
Superfamily Scarabaeoidea Latreille, 1802
Family Trogidae MacLeay, 1819
Subfamily Omorginae Nikolajev, 2005
Genus: Omorgus Erichson,
1847
Subgenus: Omorgus (Afromorgus)Scholtz, 1986
Omorgus (Afromorgus) italicus (Reiche,
1853)
(Image 1)
Trox italicus Reiche, 1853; Annales de la Société Entomologique de France (3)1:
87–90.
Material examined: ZSI-WRC-ENT-1/2638, 07.vii.2016, 01
male, Sakri, Dhule,
(20.99130N & 74.31880E, elevation 422m), coll. S.S. Patole.
Description: (Image 1 A, B) Length about 14mm, width
about 7mm; Colour: Black
Head finely granulated with two tubercles close
together in the middle of the forehead, tubercles rounded and raised; eyes
entirely hidden under the projection of the head; clypeus triangular, margins
slightly reflexed, apex slightly pointed, with anterolaterallytwo deep, shiny pits; frons throughout coarsely punctate, two rounded tubercles
on frons, tubercles coarsly punctate; anterolaterally two deep almost triangular pits on the genae; antennal scape arcuate,
stout, exceeding to half of the antenna, with yellowish long setae; dark
reddish-brown pedicel, attached subapically; antennal
club tawny.
Pronotum punctate throughout,
sides broad; the pronotal width narrower than the elytral width; lateral margins of pronotumsmooth, setose, anterolaterally with thin margin;
posteriorly furrowed; the discal area raised in the
middle, punctate; posteriorly two raised tubercles on each side of the disc.
Elytra almost parallel, rounded dorsally and truncate
apically; lateral margins smooth, with short setae; suturalmargin slightly raised; humeral callus prominent; elytra with ten ridges or
costae, costae interrupted by small transverse tubercles; the tubercles of odd
costae moderately more elevated than even ones; intervals are smooth, finely
punctate; pygidium concealed by elytra.
Scutellum hastate,
constricted at the base (Image 1C).
Protibia appears slightly
bifid, robust, coarsely punctate, dorsally setose; apical spur hooked, robust,
pointed, long reaching to first 4 tarsal segments; mesoand metatibia with two spurs; metatibialspur reaching first tarsal segment; meso and
metatarsi setose (Image 1D).
Male genitalia (Image 1E–G), trilobed;aedeagus robust; pars basalisfused dorsally; median lobe (complex) with ridges, knobs, foveae.
Known distribution until this study: India (Himachal
Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Sikkim, West Bengal), China, Pakistan, Italy.
Table 1. List of species from Trogidae family reported from India (Adopted from Zidek (2013, 2017).
|
|
Name of species |
Distribution |
|
1 |
Glyptotrox brahminus (Pittino,
1985) |
China, India (Himachal Pradesh, Punjab,
Sikkim, West Bengal), Malaya, Vietnam. |
|
2 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) frater Pittino, 2005 |
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. |
|
3 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) granulatus (Herbst,
1783) |
Afghanistan, India (Himachal Pradesh,
West Bengal, central and southern states), Pakistan. |
|
4 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) haagi (Harold, 1872) |
India (West Bengal), Pakistan. |
|
5 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) incluses (Walker, 1858) |
China, India, Sri Lanka. |
|
6 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) inermis Pittino, 2005 |
Southern India, Sri Lanka, southern
Vietnam. |
|
7 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) omacanthus (Harold, 1872) |
India (Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, West
Bengal, central states). |
|
8 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) pauliani (Haaf, 1954) |
China, India (Sikkim, West Bengal),
Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, northern Vietnam, Annam, Indonesia. |
|
9 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) testudo (Arrow, 1927) |
India, Pakistan. |
|
10 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) indicus (Harold, 1872) |
China, India (West Bengal, Tamil Nadu,
Cochin), Thailand. |
|
11 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) procerus (Harold, 1872) |
Arabia, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, central
India, Iran, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan. |
|
12 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) rimulosus (Haaf,
1957) |
British India, Coromandel (= southeastern coast of the Indian subcontinent). |
|
13 |
Omorgus (Afromorgus) italicus (Reiche,
1853) |
India (Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Jammu & Kashmir, Sikkim, West Bengal), China, Pakistan, Italy. |
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