Genus Dialecticopteryx Kirkaldy, 1907

Dialecticopteryx australica Kirkaldy, type species of Dialecticopteryx Kirkaldy.

© Copyright Murray Fletcher, Orange Agricultural Institute.

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Introduction

This genus was created by Kirkaldy (1907) for the single Australian species D. australica Kirkaldy, the fig leafhopper. Lower (1952) treated it as the subgenus Paolia of Austroasca Lower but this was synonymised with Dialecticopteryx by Fletcher & Donaldson (1992) following the synonymy of its type species, Empoasca bancrofti Evans, with D. australica by Evans (1966). Dworakowska & Sohi (1978) created two subgenera, the nominal containing three species from Bangladesh, Indonesia and Australia while the other, Akotettix Matsumura, occurs in the African and Oriental regions.

Distribution

States

New South Wales, Queensland

IBRA and IMCRA regions

IBRA

NSW, Qld: Brigalow Belt North (BBN), Brigalow Belt South (BBS), Cape York Peninsula (CYP), NSW North Coast (NNC), Sydney Basin (SB), South Eastern Queensland (SEQ), Wet Tropics (WT)

Diagnosis

An aberrant genus, distinguished by the peculiar venation of tegmina and wings. Vertex transverse, declivous, anteriorly rounded, not (or scarcely) prominent in front of eyes, longitudinally sulculate, posteriorly marginate and raised from the pronotum. Pronotum transverse, little longer than the vertex, lateral margins short, carinate. Scutellum longer than wide, about as long as the pronotum. Tegmina sparsely punctured, venation obscure; the radial and median are united at the base, fork soon after, but keep very close together till a little basal of the apical cells when they reunite; cubital obsolete basally, only appearing a little basal of the apical cells. The radiomedial reforks apical of the subapical line, thus forming a triangular cell; there are two quadrilinear cells interior of this (perhaps more if the apical veins fork). No veins in the clavus and no appendix (Kirkaldy 1907).

Dworakowska & Sohi (1978) did not provide differentiation between the two subgenera.

Diagnosis References

Kirkaldy, G.W. 1907. Leafhoppers — Supplement (Hemiptera). Bulletin of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association Experimental Station Entomological Series 3: 1-186 [71]

General References

Dworakowska, I. & Sohi, A.S. 1978. Kadrabia gen. n. and some other Typhlocybinae (Auchenorrhyncha, Cicadellidae) from India. Bulletin de l'Académie Polonaise des Sciences. Série des Sciences Biologiques II 26(7): 463–471 [463]

Evans, J.W. 1966. The leafhoppers and froghoppers of Australia and New Zealand. Memoirs of the Australian Museum 12: 1-347 [263]

Fletcher, M.J. & Donaldson, J.F. 1992. Empoasca (Empoasca) smithi, a new species of leafhopper damaging citrus in Queensland and notes on other Typhlocybinae from Australia (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae). Journal of the Australian Entomological Society 31(2): 183-186 [185]

Lower, H.F. 1952. A revision of Australian species previously referred to the genus Empoasca (Cicadellidae: Homoptera). Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 76(5-6): 190-221 [208]

History of changes