Lachnaia is a genus of leaf beetles in the subfamily Cryptocephalinae, tribe Clytrini. Multiple species in this genus are known to be myrmecophiles, such as the larvae of L. italica.
The leaf beetle genus Lachnaia Dejean, 1836 (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Cryptocephalinae)
comprises two subgenera (Barathraea Lacordaire, 1848 and the nominotypical subgenus) and includes
approximately 20 species, nine of which occur in the Iberian Peninsula (PETITPIERRE, 2000; BASELGA
& RUIZ-GARCÍA, 2007; REGALIN & MEDVEDEV, 2010).
One remarkable Iberian representative of this genus is Lachnaia (Lachnaia) variolosa (Linnaeus,
1767), rendered unmistakable by its very conspicuous irregular elytral pits. This species, originally
described from “Africa” (LINNAEUS, 1767), is currently known from Algeria and Morocco in northern
Africa (REGALIN & MEDVEDEV, 2010) and from five southern Spanish provinces in Europe (Map 1),
namely Almería, Cádiz, Granada, Málaga, and Murcia (PETITPIERRE, 2000; LENCINA et al., 2006;
VALLADARES et al., 2013). In the present contribution, we record L. (L.) variolosa from mainland
Portugal for the first time, extending its known range to the south-westernmost part of Iberia.
