First record of the assassin bug genus Coilopus Elkins , 1969 ( Hemiptera : Heteroptera : Reduviidae ) from Colombia

The assassin bug genus Coilopus Elkins, 1969 is recorded for the first time from Colombia. Coilopus vellus Elkins, 1969 is a wasp mimic that was previously recorded from Costa Rica, French Guiana, and Brazil. The Colombian specimens fill the distributional gap between the known Central and South American records. In addition, based on collected wasps from the same place as Coilopus, Mischocyttarus sp. (Vespidae: Polistinae) is proposed as the hymenopteran model of this mimetic harpactorine.

For most genera of Neotropical Harpactorini the only available data is their original description, in most cases without any mention in the literature afterwards (e.g., Ambastus Stål, 1872;Carmenula Maldonado, 1992;Ecelenodalus Elkins & Wygodzinsky, 1957;Thysanuchus Bergroth, 1918), or without any modern taxonomic treatment (Forero et al. 2008).This has led to confusion about the generic circumscription of a number of taxa and resulted in a number of synonyms among Neotropical genera (Gil-Santana and Forero 2009;Swanson 2012).If taxonomic information is scant, biological data are basically non-existent for most Neotropical Harpactorini.Coilopus Elkins, 1969 is a harpactorine genus resembling wasps (Elkins 1969), for which no biological information is available.Coilopus has been recorded from Costa Rica, French Guiana, and Brazil (Elkins 1969;Gil-Santana and Forero 2009).
During fieldwork at Reserva El Caduceo (Colombia, Meta, San Martín), a few specimens of Coilopus were found.They represent a new generic record from Colombia.
The Reserva Natural El Caduceo is located in the municipality of San Martín (Meta, Colombia), at 03.66553° N, 073.65831°W, with an elevation of 309 m above sea level.The specimens were manually collected between 10-14 March 2014.All examined specimens are deposited in the Entomological collection of the Museo Javeriano de Historia Natural (MPUJ), of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia.
Notocyrtoides Carvalho, Costa and Gil-Santana (2001): 1 [gen.nov., description]; Gil-Santana and Forero ( 2009 Diagnosis: Foretibia with apical spur; longitudinal median sulcus of pronotum reaching hind lobe of pronotum; male genitalia with dorsal phallothecal sclerite broad, anteriorly pointed.Maldonado and Lozada (1992) stated that Coilopus resembles bees, although Elkins (1969) had already suggested it to be a wasp mimic, similar to Dolichovespula Rohwer or Vespa Linnaeus.The Colombian specimens of C. vellus when alive resembled a small wasp in their movements and general appearance.Several species of Vespidae occur in the reserve, but there is a species of Mischocyttarus (Vespidae: Polistinae) at El Caduceo which is very similar to C. vellus, both in structure and coloration (Figure 2).Unlike Dolichovespula and Vespa, which do not have Neotropical distribution, Mischocyttarus is mostly Neotropical in distribution (Carpenter 1993;Silveira 2008).This species Diagnosis: Medium sized (11-14 mm); head with paired, long spine-like post antennal tubercles; antenna with basiflagellomere incrassate; legs long and narrow, all femora slender, mid and hind tibiae slightly incrassate; pronotum inflated, finely punctuated, prolonged posteriorly covering at most basal abdominal segment, divided in three lobes, first lobe broadly rounded on anterior margin, second lobe laterally expanded as sharp lateral prolongations, third lobe constricted basally with paired lateral prolongations and apically truncate; hemelytron surpassing abdomen for about a third of its length; abdomen strongly constricted at base; male paramere well developed and externally visible.Elkins, 1969 (Figure 1)

Coilopus vellus
Coilopus vellus Elkins (1969): 460 [sp.nov., description]; Putshkov and Putshkov (1988): 42 [catalog]; Maldonado (1990)  of Mischocyttarus has a similar coloration to C. vellus, being mostly pale yellow, with the pronotum yellow with a contrasting dark pattern, and a banded abdomen with pale brown tergites (Figure 2).Although C. vellus is more robust than this Mischocyttarus species, it structurally resembles this wasp due to the similar total length, enlarged antennal basiflagellomere, and constricted abdominal base (Figure 2).Despite some structural and minor obvious color differences, we think that the resemblance is striking.The black markings on the rounded anterior lobe of the enlarged pronotum in Coilopus might correspond to the pair of compound eyes of the vespid, with the black markings of the other lobes of the pronotum vaguely resembling the dark markings on the thorax of Mischocyttarus.Nonetheless, the nearly horizontal black markings on the second pronotal lobe in Coilopus do not fully correspond to any structure or color pattern in the wasp.Overall, the striking black and yellow color pattern and the particular structural modifications in Coilopus might be considered a case of imperfect mimicry, which might be still advantageous (e.g., Penney et al. 2012).
El Caduceo reserve protects a relict of gallery forest surrounded by a matrix of anthropogenic grassland.Specimens of C. vellus were collected in both types of habitats.The area where the reserve is located belongs to the biogeographic Sabana province (Hernández et al. 1992;Morrone 2014), an area which is currently a highly transformed landscape (Etter et al. 2008).Given that C. vellus was found in both a gallery forest and open grassland, this might indicate that this species is not habitat specific, explaining in part its widespread distribution in the Neotropical region.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dr. Miguel Suárez kindly allowed to us to visit the reserve El Caduceo and facilitated our work there.Carlos Sarmiento (Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Bogotá) helped us identify the Mischocyttarus wasp.Jean-Michel Bérenger and Guanyang Zhang kindly provided criticism that improved the manuscript.We thank the members of the Invertebrate Zoology course 2014-I for the company and help during fieldwork.This paper is a contribution of the project "Actividades docentes como apoyo al conocimiento de la biodiversidad colombiana" ID PPTA 00006416 of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Distribution of Coilopus vellus Elkins.Circles are recorded localities from the literature and the triangle indicates the placement of the Colombian locality of the examined specimens.