Aeoloides pallidulus, Platia & Pedroni, 2025

Platia, Giuseppe & Pedroni, Guido, 2025, Five new species and new records of click beetles from Saudi Arabia with an updated catalogue (Coleoptera, Elateridae), Faunitaxys 13 (5), pp. 1-12 : 1-2

Aeoloides pallidulus n. sp.

( Fig. 1, 7, 12, 17)

ZooBank: https://zoobank.org/ 47D283A7-8D2D-4C7D-8181-0B0C788F9226

Holotype, ♂, SW Saudi Arabia: 55 km SW Turabah (20°39’44”N; 41°25’05”E), 14.XI.2023, K. Orszulik. ( CSO).

Paratype, 1 ♀, 12 km S of Al Bahah (19°54’14”N, 41°26’12”E), 3.XI. 2023, K. Orszulik. ( CPG) .

Diagnosis. –A species that could be compared to A. yemenita Platia, 2012 for the general shape and size, it is easily separated for the lighter colours of the integuments,the very fewapparent andsmalltubercle at the base of pronotum and the different shape of aedeagus.

Description of the holotype

Coloration. – Moderately shiny; entirely yellowish with very dense, short and golden pubescence.

Head. – Frons very slightly and regularly convex with anterior margin moderately arcuate and just protruding above the clypeus; frontal-clypeal space regularly developed; punctuation dense with punctures variable in diameters with very short, shiny intervals. – Antennae short not reaching for about the last two articles the apices of posterior angles of pronotum serrated from the fourth article on; second and third articles sub-conical with the second a little shorter than the third, taken together long as the fourth; fourth-tenth sub-triangular with the fourth longer; fifth-tenth about twice longer than wide, last long as the penultimate, sub-ellipsoidal, symmetrically constricted after the middle.

Pronotum. – 1.05widerthan long,widest behindthe middle, moderately and regularly convex without any depressions and with a short, blunt at apex, very few apparent tubercle at middle of the base; sides from behind the middle regularly narrowing to the anterior angles, very slightly narrowing backwards to the posterior angles, the latter short, pointed, not divergent, uni-carinate; carina short, sub-parallel to the lateral margin, the latter complete and in the posterior third clearly visible in a dorsal view; punctuation dense, uniformly distributed on all the surface and double; larger, simple, and regularly distributed punctures are mixed with other very fine, nearly contiguous giving a sub-shining appearance to the surface.

Scutellum . – Quadrangular, strongly and obliquely sloping forwards, ridged at base, rounded at apex, moderately convex, densely and finely punctured.

Elytra. – 2.18x longer than pronotum and narrower than it, moderately convex; sides very gradually narrowing from the base to the apices, these regularly rounded; striae regularly developed and deeply punctured; interstriae slightly convex and finely punctured.

Legs. – With tarsi regularly decreasing in length, simple.

Aedeagus. – As in the Fig. 1 (length 0.93 mm).

Female. – Identical to the male in the general shape and colour of the integuments with intermediate antennal articles slenderer.

Size. – Length 6.06-6.56 mm; width 1.81 mm.

Etymology. – The name is derived from the yellowish colours of the integuments.