Metopina obsoleta Beyer 1960

Metopina obsoleta Beyer, 1960

(Figs 4, 8, 11)

Metopina obsoleta Beyer, 1960: 429; Disney & Kistner, 1989: 86.

Material. Israel: 1♀ Almagor [32°55'N 35°36'E], 2.xi.2010, W. Kuslitzky, Malaise trap; 1♀ same data but 16–31.xi.2010; 1♂ same data but 12–31.i.2011.

Distribution. This species was described from Uganda (Beyer, 1960) and subsequently found in Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Disney & Kistner, 1989). This is the first record of it in Israel.

Biology. In Zimbabwe, this species was collected from a fungus garden of Odontotermes transvaalensis (Disney & Kistner, 1989).

Remarks. Metopina obsoleta belongs to a group of species that also includes M. hamularis Liu, 1995, M. rotundata Liu, 2012, M. ventralis Schmitz, 1927, and M. vanharteni Disney, 2006. The female of each species is easily identifiable based on the structure of its tergite 5. On the contrary, recognition of males may pose some difficulty, although they all are distinct in having a club- or sausage-like spine on the trochanter (Fig. 11) and sclerotized plates on the abdominal venter. Males of M. obsoleta are very similar to those of M. vanharteni known from Saudi Arabia; however, females of the former species immediately differ in the semilunar shape of their fifth abdominal tergite.