PROC. ENTOMOL. SOC. WASH. 1()()(3), IW8. pp. 31 1-520 IMMATURE LIFE STAGE DESCRIPTIONS AND DISTRIBUTION OF CULOPTILA CANTHA (ROSS) (TRICHOPTERA: GLOSSOSOMATIDAE) David C. Houghton and Kenneth W. Stewart Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, U.S.A.; (DCH) Current address: Department of Entomology, 219 Hodson Hall, 1980 Fol-well Avenue, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN 55108, U.S.A. (e-mail:
[email protected]). Abstract. — The eggs, larvae of all instars, larval cases, and pupae of Culoptila cantha (Ross) are described for the first time. The distribution of the species is provided. Key Words: Culoptila, Glossosomatidae, Trichoptera, eggs, larvae, pupae, cases, de-scriptions, distribution The primarily Neotropical glossosomatid genus Culoptila Mosely contains 1 7 species from the new world (Morse, in prep.) in-cluding four from the United States: C. can-tha (Ross), C. thoracica (Ross), C. kinimin-si Denning, and C. moselyi Denning. All four are found in the Southwest, and C. cantha and C thoracica are also recorded from the East (Flint 1974). Wiggins ( 1977, 1996a) provided the only illustration of a Culoptila larva, C. moselyi, and indicated that its cases are composed of small uniform rock fragments with partial silk collars on the periphery. There have been no reported correlations or descrip-tions of the larvae or cases of the other three North American species, or of any Culoptila pupa. Materials and Methods Specimens of C. cantha came primarily from a large riffle of the Brazos River lo-cated approximately 35 km below Morris Sheppard Dam in Palo Pinto County, Texas, and were collected from January, 1995, to March, 1997. A recent description of this site can be found in Houghton and Stewart (1998a). Additional specimens were exam-ined from the Illinois Natural History Sur-vey, Champaign, IL (INHS); Montana En-tomology Collection, Bozeman, MT (MTEC); and the National Museum of Nat-ural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (USNM). Literature re-cords, and databases from the California Academy of Sciences (CAS), Clemson Uni-versity Arthropod Collection (CUAC), INHS, MTEC, Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), USNM, the University of Minne-sota Insect Collection (UMSP), and the University of North Texas Insect Collection (UNT) were searched for the distribution of C cantha. Larvae and pupae were collected from rocks using soft-touch forceps and with a two-stage dip net with mesh sizes of 1.00 and 0.15 mm. Measurements for determi-nation of larval instars were made with an Olympus Cue-2 Image Analyzer attached to an Olympus dissecting microscope. The length of the head capsule was measured from the anterior margin of the frons to the posterior margin of the coronal suture, and was plotted against the length of the pro-thoracic mid-dorsal ecdysal suture to deter-mine instar size range and number (Daly
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