Taxonomic status of Parapraocis, a new genus of Praociini (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae: Pimeliinae) from Peru F

. The new genus Parapraocis (Pimeliinae: Praociini) is described to accommodate three species from the northern Peruvian coast previously placed in the genus Praocis Eschscholtz: Parapraocis vagecostata (Fairmaire, 1902) n. comb. (type species), Parapraocis rossi (Kulzer, 1958) n. comb., and Parapraocis fumaria (Kulzer, 1966) n. comb. Diagnosis, description and illustrations of external morphology, male and female genitalia, and habitus photographs for two of its species are presented. A discussion on the raising of this new genus as well as homological structures in the female genitalia of the Praociini are also included.


INTRODUCTION
Praociini is an endemic Neotropical tribe of Pimeliinae with 149 species arranged in 14 genera distributed in arid and semiarid environments of Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile (Kulzer, 1958;Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2012). Praocis Eschscholtz is the most speciesrich genus of the tribe with 77 species and eight subspecies arranged in nine subgenera, distributed from northern Peru to the southern part of Patagonia in Argentina and Chile (Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2014).
Digital images were taken with a Canon S50 adapted to a Leica MZ6 stereomicroscope. Final images  were montaged with the image stacking freeware CombineZM (Hadley, 2006).

Etymology
The name refers to morphological affinity, Para = close, nearby and from Praocis, pertaining to the tribe Praociini; gender masculine.

Description
Head. Prognathus (Fig. 4); labrum with anterior margin concave, not broadened; clypeal anterior margin concave, extended beyond epicanthus, width of anterior margin not exceeding half the interocular width; clypeal suture as a horizontal groove covered by frons, clypeus lower than frons; clypeus with large and small punctures, with setae arising only from large ones, frons with large punctures bearing umbilicate setae; ligula subtrapezoidal, sclerotized and ventrally exposed, exceeding half of mentum area, subequal in width and size to mentum; labial palps inserted at middle of ventral surface of ligula; mentum subtrapezoidal, with umbilicate setae; base of mandible twice as thick as the apex; maxillary palps with last segment subcylindrical; eyes oval, not emarginate near epicanthus (Figs. 2-3), postgenal margin well developed, covering posterior margin of eye (Fig. 2); antennae filiform, slightly capitate, antennomere 3 longer than 4 + 5 combined, antennomeres 3-9 and 11 longer than broad, Revista de la Sociedad Entomológica Argentina 79(3): [34][35][36][37][38][39][40]2020 Patrice Bouchard (Editor) on this situation and they made available for the first time five subgenera of Praocis which were previously proposed in Kulzer (1958) (Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2012) was not treated by Flores & Pizarro Araya (2014) and therefore, is still in an uncertain nomenclatural status. Although Flores & Pizarro-Araya (2012) had selected a type species for "Parapraocis" they did not explicitly mention that they were establishing a new nominal taxon, a mandatory requirement for all new names published after 1999 (ICZN 1999: Article 16.1). Therefore, the name cannot be attributed to them and it is still a nomen nudum.
The objective of this study is formally to describe Parapraocis as a new genus within the tribe Praociini using characters from external morphology and genital features and to designate its type species in order to make available the name proposed by Kulzer (1958).

MATERIAL AND METHODS
This study is based on examination of specimens borrowed from the following collections and curators: Field  Body length was measured dorsally, along the midline, from the anterior margin of the labrum to the apex of elytra. Terminology used in the descriptions follows recent papers dealing with Praociini genera (Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2012, 2014 except that "lateral expansion of frons" is replaced with "epicanthus", "proepisternum" is replaced with hypomeron and "mesosternum" with mesoventrite (Matthews et al., 2010). Dissection methods are those used by Tschinkel & Doyen (1980) for genital structures. Terminology of male genitalia was taken from Flores (1996). For basal lamina of tegmen/lateral styles length (B/E), and median lobe/tegmen length (L/T) we used the ratios proposed by Flores (1996). Terminology and ratios of female genitalia are those proposed by Tschinkel & Doyen (1980) and Doyen (1994). Following the suggestion of Kaminski et al. (2020) to assess homologies in the morphology of female genitalia, we compared the female genitalia of this new genus with previous studies antennomere 10 broader than long (Figs. 2-3), apical tomentose sensory patches on antennomere 9 in two areas, internal larger than external, on antennomere 10 in a semicircle dorsally continuous, on antennomere 11 on distal half (Fig. 3).

DISCUSSION
The genus Praocis was defined by Flores & Pizarro-Araya (2012) on the basis of five constant character states: maxillary palps with last segment axe-shaped (apex twice as wide as base), antennomere 3 shorter than 4 + 5 combined, pronotum with single lateral margin slender, expanded, remote from disc, and anterior angles rounded. These character states are shared by species of the nine current subgenera of Praocis (sensu Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2012) and some of them were mentioned in previous revisions (Solier, 1840;Kulzer, 1958).
We could not study specimens of P. fumaria . The present examination of P. vagecostata and P. rossi specimens as well as the study of the description of P. fumaria (Kulzer, 1966) led us to conclude that these species must be excluded from Praocis because the following character states are not fitting with the current definition of this genus (sensu Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2012): maxillary palps with last segment subcylindrical (apex 1.5 times as wide as base), antennomere 3 longer than 4 + 5 combined, pronotum with lateral margin double, not expanded, contiguous with disc, and anterior angles acute. Because the second-and third-character states are unique within Praociini genera, we have recognized Parapraocis as a separate genus including the aforementioned three species. Taking into account the new status of Parapraocis , the Praociini tribe currently includes 15 genera.
Abdomen. Ventrites I-IV: central area with small and dense protuberances lacking setae giving rough appearance, lateral areas with small punctures each bearing a fine seta; ventrite V: central-anterior area with small and dense protuberances lacking setae, lateral and posterior marginal areas with large punctures each bearing a stout seta.
Species included. Parapraocis includes three species inhabiting northern Peru previously placed in morphological remarks: (1) Praociini species possess ovipositors largely different from the plesiomorphic arrangement described for Tenebrionidae, i.e. coxites divided into four lobes (Tschinkel & Doyen, 1980). Coxites of all known Praociini genera are divided into two visible lobes (Fig. 8): the basal lobe bears oblique baculi and the apical lobe is composed of the fully fused second, third and fourth lobes, which bears lateral gonostyli. The basal lobes are always separated from the apical lobes by a transverse pleat and always the basal lobe is shorter than the apical lobe. This configuration is also shared by genera of the South American related tribes within Pimeliinae: Nycteliini and Physogasterini (Doyen, 1994;Flores, 1996: Fig. 1); (2) the female tube offer diagnostic characters at generic level within Praociini in vagina shape, spermathecal accessory gland length, branching pattern and length of spermathecal tubes and relation to vagina length as it has been described for the following genera: Antofagapraocis Flores and Falsopraocis Kulzer (Flores, 2000a), Thylacoderes Solier (Flores, 2000b), Platesthes Waterhouse (Flores, 2004) Koch (Flores & Vidal, 2009) and Praocis (Praocis) Eschscholtz (Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2012). Conversely, in a recent study of the African representatives of the Pimeliinae, tribe Sepidiini, Kaminski et al. (2020) found diagnostic characters in the coxite configuration (ovipositor) at the generic level while morphology of genital tubes seems to be stable across the tribe.
The name Parapraocis is made available for the first time in this article. To fix its current interpretation and to ensure stability as the name was used in previous works (Kulzer, 1958;Flores & Pizarro-Araya, 2012;Smith et al., 2015;Giraldo & Flores, 2016;Juárez-Noé & González-Coronado, 2018, 2019, we use the same name as proposed by Kulzer (1958). Additionally, we offer a diagnosis, designate the type species, and explicitly mention that we are establishing a new nominal taxon (Articles 13.1, 16.1 and 67.4.1 ICZN  1999).
Parapraocis includes also several unnamed species that will be treated in a forthcoming publication dealing with the whole genus, comprising redescriptions, descriptions, taxonomic key, and accurate distributional data for species.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the curators for providing us access to their respective entomological collections and for the loan of specimens, as well as two anonymous reviewers for suggestions that improved this paper. Research by GEF was supported by CONICET, Argentina, and NSF DEB-1754630 (USA). AEG thanks FONDECYT, Peru for subsidizing the research internship titled "Implementación de investigaciones sobre Sistemática de tenebriónidos sudamericanos (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae)" carried out at IADIZA (Mendoza, Argentina) on September 3-16, 2017.