Morphology of the adult and immatures of a striking new species of leaf-mining Brachys Dejean from Brazil (Buprestidae, Agrilinae)
ARTICLE
Morphology of the adult and immatures of a
striking new species of leaf-mining Brachys
Dejean from Brazil (Buprestidae, Agrilinae)
Letizia Janaina Migliore¹³; Sônia A. Casari¹⁴ & Gabriel Paiola²⁵
¹ Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Museu de Zoologia (MZUSP). São Paulo, SP, Brasil.
² Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Faculdade de Engenharia (FEIS), Departamento de Proteção Vegetal. Ilha Solteira, SP. Brasil.
³ ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2731-8185. E‑mail:
⁴ ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4895-6709. E‑mail:
⁵ ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9072-2338. E‑mail:
Abstract. Adult and immature stages of a new species, Brachys cleidecostae sp. nov., are described and illustrated. This species
represents the first leaf-mining buprestid with two broad, prominent horn-like apophyses on vertex, resembling broad horns.
The material was collected within unusual shaped leaf mines in Alibertia sessilis (Vell.) K. Schum (Rubiaceae), a native species
from Brazilian Savanna (Cerrado). This is the first record of Brachys associated with a host plant of family Rubiaceae.
Key-Words. Aedeagus; Brachyina; Larva; Marmelinho; Mine; Pupa.
INTRODUCTION
The subfamily Agrilinae comprises nearly a
half of all known Buprestidae species and is composed of four tribes and 23 subtribes (Bellamy,
2008, 2013). The larval stages comprise exclusively endophyte species, with three major feeding
habits: xylophagous in the majority of members
of the tribes Agrilini Laporte, 1835 and Coraebini
Bedel, 1821; stem-miners in members of tribe
Aphanisiticini Jaquelin du Val, 1863; and leaf-miners in members of tribe Tracheini Gory & Laporte,
1835 (Bellamy, 2008; Migliore et al., 2020). The
tribe Tracheini comprises four subtribes with 12
genera and represents one of the most specialized groups within Buprestidae. Within Tracheini,
the subtribe Brachyina Cobos, 1979 currently
includes three genera (c.f., Migliore et al., 2020):
Brachys Dejean, 1833, a considerably speciose
genus (140 species; Nearctic and Neotropical regions) with species adapted to live in dicotyledon
plants (Waddell & Mousseau, 1996), Taphrocerus
Solier, 1833 (173 species; Afrotropical, Nearctic,
Neotropical and Patagonian regions) adapted to live in monocotyledons (Story et al., 1979;
MacRae, 2004), and Lius Deyrolle, 1864 (126 species; Neotropical region), probably adapted to live
in dicotyledons (Lourenço et al., 2017).
In the Neotropical region, the taxonomy of
Brachys species needs a critical review. Species of
leaf-mining genera, including Brachys, probably
due to their small size, are many times collected together with other insects (especially with
Malaise trap) and forgotten with the residual material housed in the collections. Only after combing these samples it is possible to find unidentified and/or undescribed species. The Brazilian
fauna of Brachys is extremely rich, counting more
than 70 species described in the past (Bellamy,
2008), however studies and knowledge on this
genus have practically stagnated almost half a
century ago.
Representatives of genus Brachys are associated with a series of different plants families
as Hamamelidaceae, Sapindaceae, Salicaceae
and Tiliaceae (Weiss & Nicolay, 1919; Nicolay &
Weiss, 1923), also with records of associations
with Gramineae (Obenberger, 1937) and perennial terrestrial vine Epigaea repens L., Ericaceae
(Hespenheide & Eiseman, 2016). In the USA, 12
Brachys species live on Fagaceae, often on oaks
(Hespenheide & Eiseman, 2016). A list with part
of know host plants was presented by Kogan
(1964a).
Except for few species of Costa Rica and
Panama (Fisher, 1922; Nicolay & Weiss, 1923;
Hering, 1942), the life-history of Neotropical
Brachys, their immatures and host plant associations remain unknown. For Brazilian Brachys
species, the only known immature stage and
host-plant association is with Inga sessilis Mart,
1837 (Kogan, 1964a). The association with plants
Pap. Avulsos Zool., 2020; v.60.special-issue: e202060(s.i.).32
http://doi.org/10.11606/1807-0205/2020.60.special-issue.32
http://www.revistas.usp.br/paz
http://www.scielo.br/paz
Edited by: Gabriel Biffi
Received: 13/11/2019
Accepted: 11/02/2020
Published: 04/03/2020
ISSN On-Line: 1807-0205
ISSN Printed: 0031-1049
ISNI: 0000-0004-0384-1825
http://zoobank.org/90713D63-79C4-4148-98D6-1648FA16BCFB
Pap. Avulsos Zool., 2020; v.60.special-issue: e202060(s.i.).32
2/11
of genus Inga and Brachys has already been reported
for Brachys gregori Obenberger, 1937 from Costa Rica
(Hering, 1942).
Comparing with the xylophagous species (Benoit,
1996; Bílý & Volkovitsh, 2007), leafminer buprestid larvae morphology remain almost unknown. The larvae
of the Tracheini species are poorly known, and the few
descriptions are focused mainly in palearctic genera of
the subtribe Tracheina, such as Trachys Fabricius, 1801
and Habroloma Thomson, 1864 (Bílý, 1992). This situation
is even more critical concerning to Neotropical genera,
the only descriptions of larvae of Brazilian leaf-mining
Buprestidae are concentrated in the years 1963 and
1964 presented by Marcos Kogan, a researcher at the
Instituto Osvaldo Cruz in Rio de Janeiro. In this period,
the author contributed with important biological and
taxonomic aspects of leaf-mining buprestids of the genus Pachyschelus Solier, 1833 (subtribe Pachyschelina)
and Leiopleura Deyrolle, 1864 (subtribe Leiopleurina),
including immature forms: Kogan (1963) described the
eggs, larvae, pre-pupae and pupae of three species of
genus Pachyschelus: P. subundulatus Kerremans, 1896,
P. fulgidipennis Lucas, 1858 and P. binderi Obenberger,
1925. Later on, Kogan (1964b) described immature forms
and presented biological data for P. mimus Obenberger,
1925 and P. urvillae Kogan, 1964b, and a redescription of
Leiopleura venustula (Gory, 1841), including immature
stages and ethology (Kogan, 1964c).
In the same period Kogan (1964a) described for the
first-time, ethological aspects of a new species of Brachys
from Brazil, Brachys inga, including the descriptions of
the adult and immature stages as egg, larva and pupa,
as well as the mine. So far, this is the only description of
immatures and mine of a Brazilian Brachys species.
Except for the aforementioned species and
Taphrocerus elongatus (Gory, 1841), a large part of knowledge about immatures of subtribe Brachyina is limited
to the Nearctic region: Brachys aerosus Melsheimer, 1845,
B. ovatus (Weber, 1801), B. tesselatus (Fabricius, 1801),
Taphrocerus elongatus (Gory, 1841) and T. schaefferi
Nicolay & Weiss, 1920. Regarding Taphrocerus elongates,
from Argentina, Bruch (1916) reported the metamorphosis and described their egg, larva and pupa. Immatures of
T. schaefferi were described by Story et al. (1979) based on
material from North America. Regarding to Brachys species, Weiss & Nicolay (1919) briefly described the larvae
and pupae of B. aerosus and B. ovatus from New Jersey,
USA. The larva of the latter was also partially illustrated
by Böving & Craighead (...truncated)
