Ripidius paleoslavicus Perkovsky & Telnov, 2026, sp. nov.

Ripidius paleoslavicus sp. nov. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: 4F3FE00B-F86A-4786-9B9C-778265011A19 (Figs 1–3) Type material designated. 1 ♂ SIZK OL-687. Syninclusions: SIZK OL-687/I: Acari (Oribatei), a leg of Tipuloidea. Derivatio nominis. The amber piece with the new species came from an area considered by archaeologists to be an ancestral homeland of the Slavs (e.g., Gavritukhin 2009), influencing the name of the new species. Measurements. Holotype ♂, total body length 4.3 mm; head length ~ 0.44 mm, pronotal length ~ 0.65 mm, maximum pronotal width ~ 0.94 mm, elytral length 1.5 mm, maximum elytral width ~ 0.42 mm. Description. Holotype ♂. Dark brown to black, only prothoracic legs and metatarsi bicolour. Head globular, rather small. Mandible not present. Maxillary palpus positioned ventrally, bimerous, of short basal and significantly longer terminal palpomeres; maxillary palpus distinctly longer than basal antennomere. Labial palpus not present. Frons and vertex flattened. Head base abrupt, cranial ‘neck’ indiscernible but likely narrow.Tempus short. Compound eye large, broadly emarginate at anterior, subtruncate at posterior margin, strongly expanded dorsally and less so ventrally, narrowly contiguous on frons, separated ventrally, coarsely faceted. Interfacetal setae present, short. Postocular ommatidia indiscernible. Head dorsally and laterally in short, sparse, suberect setae. Antenna 11-merous. Antennomeres 1–3 short, of them second and third as wide as their combined length. Antennomeres 4–10 each with a long, moderately compressed, densely but short setose ramus (uniflabellate), antennomere 11 ramus-shaped. Ramus of fourth antennomere appears somewhat stronger thickened than other rami. Ramus of sixth antennomere in lateral view approximately as long as the combined length of forebody and scutellar shield. Terminal maxillary palpomeres subequal in length, right palpomere slightly longer, both terminal palpomeres subfalciform—rather widened at anterior edge in basal portion in lateral view, distinctly tapered apically. Left terminal palpomere only three times as long as wide. Pronotum slightly convex in dorsal aspect, posterolateral angles acutely angulate. Base of pronotum subtruncate. Disc of pronotum and scutellar shield moderately dense, appressedly setose. Scutellar shield large, approximately half as long as pronotum, approximately as long as wide, same level with base of pronotum (not raised or depressed in lateral view), posterior margin broadly subtruncate. Elytron flattened in dorsal aspect, gradually but distinctly narrows posteriorly, apically broadly rounded, much shorter than abdomen, slightly more than twice as long as pronotum. Elytra widely separated from each other by scutellar shield. Punctures on anterior portion of elytra rather dense. Elytral setae moderately dense, short, suberect on basal, appressed on apical portion of elytron. Metathoracic wing fully developed. Legs long, slender, densely and short setose. Tibiae slightly widened distally, appear not flattened, surface densely microspinose. Tarsi appear not flattened (metatarsus - Fig. 3B). Second protarsomere nearly as long as the combined length of third and fourth protarsomeres. Metatibial terminal spurs or spine-like terminal setae not present. Sexual dimorphism. Female is unknown. Diagnosis (based on male). The morphology of adult Ripidius and Ripiphoridae in general is usually poor on diagnostic features and delimiting species is sometimes challenging. This is particularly true for the fossil taxa in suboptimal preservation or limited accessibility. In the holotype of R. paleoslavicus sp. nov. the scutellar shield is approximately as long as wide (the scutellar shield is approximately twice as wide as long in the studied lectotype of R. primordialis Stein, 1877 (see also Keilbach (1982) and Kaupp et al. (2001)) and the additional specimens discussed by Weitschat & Wichard (1998) and Batelka et al. (2020) from Baltic amber), the rather strongly widened (in lateral view) terminal maxillary palpomere, the length of the ramus of the sixth antennomere which is as long as the combined length of the head, pronotum and scutellar shield, while in R. primordialis this ramus appears comparatively less elongate. The new species differs from the extant R. abeillei (Chobaut, 1891) (Mediterranean) in the non-angulate basal angles of the head, from the extant R. pectinicornis Thunberg, 1806 (likely cosmopolitan) in the absence of the postocular ommatidia and from the extant R. quadriceps (Abeille de Perrin, 1872) (Europe, NW Africa) in the shorter tempus and in the compound eyes not contiguous on ventral head.The discernible morphological differences appear, to our opinion, sufficient for the erection of a new taxon for the extinct Ukrainian species. It is not unlikely that the presence of the interfacetal setae in the new species should also be considered as a diagnostic feature compared to other congeners (in the extinct R. primordialis the interfacetal setae are indiscernible). Remark. Three species of the cockroach genus Ectobius Stephens, 1835 are known from Baltic and Danish amber (Anisyutkin et al. 2024a) but none are known from Rovno amber, and nor are other cockroaches described from Russoscandia (see Anisyutkin et al. 2024b). Judging from the available data on the extant Australian Ripidiini, which comprise at least 11 species (Riek 1955), differences in their hosts may be of great evolutionary importance for the speciation of these cockroach parasitoids.