ZOOTAXA ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) Accepted by B. Kondratieff: 20 Mar. 2019; published: 9 May 2019 311 Zootaxa 4603 (2): 311–326 https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/ Copyright © 2019 Magnolia Press Article https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4603.2.5 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:27CFFE32-AC9A-4532-847D-22A1EB22A71B Marthamea bayae, a new species of stonefly from Algeria (Plecoptera: Perlidae) SMAIL LAMINE 1 , ABDELKADER LOUNACI 1 , JEAN-PAUL G. REDING 2,4 & GILLES VINÇON 3 1 Laboratoire ‘Ressources Naturelles’, Département de Biologie, Faculté des Sciences Biologiques et Sciences Agronomiques, Univer- sité Mouloud Mammeri, Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria 2 2 Petit-Berne, CH-2035 Corcelles, Switzerland. E-mail: jean-paul.reding@bluewin.ch 3 55 Bd Joseph Vallier, F-38100 Grenoble, France. E-mail: gvincon@gmail.com 4 Corresponding author. E-mail: jean-paul.reding@bluewin.ch Abstract A new species of the perlid genus Marthamea Klapálek, M. bayae sp. n. from Algeria is described and illustrated based on the morphology of adults and larvae. This is the first known record for the genus from North Africa. Key words: stoneflies, North Africa, Djurdjura Massif, Kabylia Introduction The genus Marthamea Klapálek, 1907 is a rare and endangered perlid stonefly taxon (Fochetti & Tierno de Figueroa 2006; Graf et al. 2009) which currently includes three species: Marthamea vitripennis (Burmeister, 1839) and M. selysii (Pictet, 1841) distributed in the Palearctic Region (Zwick 1984; DeWalt et al. 2019; Graf et al. 2009, 2019), and M. beraudi (Navás, 1909) reported from the Eastern Mediterranean (Berthélemy & Dia 1982; Zwick 1984; Bromley 1988). Recent samplings of aquatic insects in the Djurdjura Massif of Kabylia of northcentral Algeria con- ducted by the first two authors have resulted in the discovery of adults and larvae of a hitherto unknown species of Marthamea, which is described below. This is the first known record for the genus from North Africa. Study area The Kabylia of Djurdjura (Fig. 30) located in northcentral Algeria, is a geographical entity whose uniqueness is as much a result of its climate, its wide variety of landscapes, as its animal and plant communities. Compared to the rest of Algeria, it is a distinctive region which may be further subdivided into two distinct subregions: the Djurd- jura, which constitutes the largest limestone massif of the Tell Atlas with peaks often exceeding 2,000 m altitude, abundant rainfall (1,200–1,500 mm) and relatively low water temperatures (8°C–16°C) (Derridj 1990; Lounaci & Vinçon 2005); the Sebaou Valley, an elongated and flared depression due to its geological structure and the nature of the terrain (Kabylian magmatic and metamorphic basement massifs), drained by Oued Sebaou, the major river of Djurdjura Kabylia. In this subregion, average annual rainfall is 700 mm and average water temperatures are 18 °C (Lounaci 2005). The study sites (Figs. 30, 31, 32, 33 & 34) are located within a drainage basin of about 4,000 km 2 , consisting of rugged terrain with steep slopes and significant changes in altitude. The dominant feature of the streams is the irregularity of discharge, floods alternating with low water episodes. Water deficit in the summer period induces a temporary flow regime for a large number of streams. The peculiar geological, tectonic and paleozoological history of Djurdjura Kabylia makes this region an im- portant and promising area for faunistic, ecological and biogeographical studies. The region is still poorly known, with historic records that have not been updated and areas with difficult access, remain unexplored. The global and regional assessments made by various authors in the past (Berthélemy 1973, Lounaci & Vinçon, 2005, Yasri- Cheboubi et al., 2013a and 2013b, Yasri-Cheboubi et al. 2016) would require updated and more complete records,