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A NEW WEST AFRICAN SPRINGTAIL. 



By Pkofessor George H. Carpenter. 

 Royal College of Science, Dublin. 



Among various insects collected on behalf of the Entomological Research 

 Committee by Dr. R. W. Gray in Southern Nigeria, a large number of minute 

 Collembola, all belonging to the same species, and taken at Benin City on June 

 9th, 1910, have been sent to me for identification. So little is known of Tropical 

 African Collembola, that no surprise could be felt when the insect proved to 

 belong to an undescribed species. Dr. Gray gives no information as to the kind 

 of locality in which this springtail was found, or whether it was in any way 

 injurious. In Europe, however, in recent years, students of economic zoology 

 have come, more and more, to recognise that many species of Collembola feed on 

 living plant tissues l as well as on the decaying vegetable and animal refuse which 

 forms the usual food of their order. It seems fitting therefore that an account 

 of the insect should be published in this Bulletin, if only to call the attention of 

 entomologists working in Tropical Africa to the scientific interest, and probable 

 economic importance of springtails. 



Order COLLEMBOLA. 



Family Entomobryidae. 



Sub-family Isotominae. 



The new species from Benin belongs to the genus Isotoma in its older and 

 wider sense. This exceedingly widespread genus (represented in Franz Josef 

 Land and South Victoria Land) includes springtails of typical build without 

 scaly covering, with the third and fourth abdominal segments approximately 

 equal in length, and with simple, ovoid, post-antennal organs on the head. As 

 the fifth and sixth abdominal segments are fused together, and the abdominal 

 sensory bristles simple, this species falls into the sub-genus Isotomina, as dis- 

 tinguished by Borner. 2 In a paper on African Collembola, 3 the same writer 

 mentions the absence of records of Isotomae from Central and Southern Africa. 

 Wahlgren 4 has however described Isotoma lineata from Cairo, and i". 

 bituberculata from Khartum. Neither of these is closely allied to the present 

 species, having the sixth abdominal segment distinct from the fifth. 



1 F. V. Theobald. " ' Springtails ' (Collembola). Their economic importance, with notes on 

 some unrecorded instances of damage." ler Congres International d'Enfcomologie (Bruxelles, 

 1910), vol. ii, pp. 1-18, pis. i.-iii. Also in "Report on Economic Zoology" for year ending 

 September 30th, 1910, S. E. Agricultural College, Wye. 



2 C. Borner, " Neue altweltliche Collembolen, nebst Bemerkungen zur Systematik der 

 Isotominen und Entomobryinen," Sitzsb. Gesellsch. Naturforsch. Freunde, Berlin, 1903, 

 pp. 129-182. 



3 C. Borner, " Collembolen aus Ostafrika, Madagascar und Sudamerika " (in Voeltzkow's 

 Reise in Ost-Afrika, Bd. ii.), Stuttgart, 1907. 



\ E. Wahlgren, " Apterygoten aus Aegypten und dem Sudan " (in Results of the Swedish 

 Zoological Expedition to Egypt and the White Nile, 1901), Upsala, 1906. 



