Salagubang

From an email that I received from Eduard Vives about a year ago, he mentioned that this might be possibly a new species of Epipedocera. If that’s the case, then this will be the third species of the genus to be found in the country.

Collected in Pasil, Ifugao during a trip with Paul Siraudeau, its a bit bigger than the two previous Epipedocera species and darker with no reddish tinge.

Another cerambycid from the genus Epipedocera that can be found in the country is Epipedocera lunata NEWMAN 1842. It occurs together with the species featured in the previous post and what differs this from the latter is the general coloration where the pronotum and upper elytra near the base is reddish in color.

I really don’t have the relevant literature and I can’t say where this species originally was described but this is just a recent record for the Philippines.

As indicated in the previous post, the genus Epipedocera occurrs in the country but is only represented by Epipedocera lunata NEWMAN 1842. In 2004, I was able to send some specimens to Eduard Vives for identification and study and fortunately, its a new species and he described it in his paper published in 2005. That is 163 years since Newman described E. lunata that a second Epipedocera species was found to occur in the country!

Epipedocera cabigasiana VIVES 2005 is another small species, about 6mm in length. Collected in Bukidnon, it coexists with E. lunata and Centrotoclytus helleri SCHWARZER 1926, another species with almost similar markings.

The genus Epipedocera CHEVROLAT 1863 has been represented in the Philippines with the lone species E. lunata NEWMAN which was first described in 1842. In 2005, Eduard Vives described the second Philippine species in his paper published in France. Last year, I got an email from him saying that the rightmost species, above,, is a new species of Epipedocera.

If only collecting is extensive enough, I’m sure that there will still be additional species of this genus. The following posts will feature these beetles.

In 1979, Masataka Sato and Nobuo Ohbayashi published in the Bulletin of the National Science Museum of Tokyo, Japan their paper A New Parmenine Cerambycid Beetle from Luzon, the Philippines. This was the result of a Japanese zoological expedition that they conducted in 1977.

It is remarkable, as far as a zoogeographical viewpoint is concerned, that Luzonoparmena habei SATO & OHBAYASHI from the tribe Parmenini, subfamily Lamiinae to be found in the Philippines where, as the authors said, bears a superficial resemblance to those found in New Caledonia (genus Tricondyloides) and South Africa (genus Stenauxa). Other species of the tribe can also be found in Australia but curiously have not, yet, been recorded in Southeast Asia*.

This is a very small, flightless beetle at just around 5mm in length. Females (no males were available) are chestnut brown in color and are found in higher elevations. In the case of the holotype, it was collected in Mt. Polis in Ifugao at around 1850 – 1900m above sea level. This beetle is named after Dr. Tadashige Habe who led the 1977 expedition.

I am sure that this beetle or possibly a related species or subspecies can also be found in the the other high mountains across the country.

*This is as of the paper’s publication. I’m not aware of other journals that have published about other Parmenine beetles after that year.