Accepted by C. Azevedo: 6 Jun. 2018; published: 18 Jul. 2018 ZOOTAXA ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) Copyright © 2018 Magnolia Press Zootaxa 4446 (3): 301–324 http://www.mapress.com/j/zt/ Article 301 https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4446.3.1 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:933E3674-87A6-45FC-9B85-448B7840A130 A remarkable new species of Sinotilla Lelej (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae: Smicromyrmini) from Taiwan and an overview of color diversity in East Asian mutillid females JURIYA OKAYASU 1 , KEVIN A. WILLIAMS 2 & ARKADY S. LELEJ 3 1 Entomological Laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, Ehime University, Tarumi 3-5-7, Matsuyama, 790-8566 Japan. E-mail: mutiphiidae@gmail.com 2 Plant Pest Diagnostics Center, California Department of Food & Agriculture, 3294 Meadowview Road, Sacramento CA 95832, USA. E-mail: kevin.williams@cdfa.ca.gov 3 Federal Scientific Center of the East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia. E-mail: lelej@biosoil.ru Abstract A remarkable new species, Sinotilla nigrothoracica sp. nov., is described and illustrated based on females from Taiwan. This new species is characteristic in having indistinct hypostomal teeth and a black mesosoma with the lateral margins strongly convergent posteriorly. An overview of female color patterns in the far-eastern Palaearctic and eastern Oriental regions is also presented. Key words: Aculeata, Mutillinae, taxonomy, Müllerian mimicry Introduction Females of the genus Sinotilla Lelej, 1995, which range throughout the eastern Oriental and far-eastern Palaearctic regions, were recently reviewed by Okayasu (2017). In this study, all females of Sinotilla were linked by similar coloration. Specifically, each species has a black head, reddish mesosoma, and black (or dark metallic blue) metasoma with whitish setal markings. Repeated color patterns in velvet ants have recently been used to establish the World’s largest recognized Müllerian mimicry complexes (Wilson et al. 2012, 2015, 2018; Pan et al. 2017). To this point, at least 330 North American and 250 African taxa have been found to belong to eight and four mimicry rings, respectively. The predominant color pattern observed in Sinotilla females (Okayasu 2017) was also found in the Black-headed Timulla ring (55 species in Central America) and the Pan-African ring (165 species widespread in Africa). A principle feature of mimicry rings, however, is overlapping geographic ranges that indicate a shared community of predators. Therefore, these similarly colored insects from disparate continents cannot be treated as members of the same mimicry ring. The color patterns that define these mimicry rings, however, are significant indicators of aposematism, and potentially mimicry. Only months after publishing the review of Sinotilla females, a visit by JO to Hokkaido University Museum revealed a remarkable Sinotilla female with the mesosoma entirely black (Figs 1–11). As a supplement to the description of this new species, we seek to establish the rarity of its color pattern by comparing the abundance of females with the predominant Sinotilla pattern (hereafter referred to as the Black-headed Color Syndrome, or BHCS) and any other color patterns in the eastern Oriental and far-eastern Palaearctic regions. Materials and methods Description was made under a stereomicroscope Leica S8APO. Photo images were taken by Nikon Digital Sight DS-Fi1 camera attached to Leica S8APO microscope or Leica MC170 HC camera attached to Leica M165C