Species Austrotartessus ianassa (Kirkaldy, 1907)

Austrotartessus ianassa (Kirkaldy), adult female.

© Copyright Murray Fletcher, Orange Agricultural Institute.

Museums

Regional Maps

• Tartessus ianassa Kirkaldy, G.W. 1907. Leafhoppers — Supplement (Hemiptera). Bulletin of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association Experimental Station Entomological Series 3: 1-186 [47].

  Type data:

   Syntype(s) BPBM ♂ ♀, quantity unknown (coll.: vii-viii.1904), Cairns, Queensland.

Generic Combinations

• Austrotartessus ianassa (Kirkaldy, 1907). —
  Evans, F. 1981. The Tartessinae of Australia, New Guinea and some adjacent Islands (Homoptera: Cicadellidae). Pacific Insects 23(1-2): 112-188 [141]

Introduction

This is the only species of Austrotartessus known to occur in both New Guinea and Australia where it extends from Cape York Peninsula in North Queensland to the Sydney Basin of New South Wales. The New Guinean record is from the eastern part of Indonesia's West Papua province but the species almost certainly also occurs in Papua New Guinea.

Distribution

States

New South Wales, Queensland

IBRA and IMCRA regions

IBRA

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

Ecological Descriptors

All stages: phloem feeder.

Diagnosis

Female: form of the last [Tartessus ianthe Kirkaldy = Brunotartessus ianthe (Kirkaldy)], but vertex more emarginate basally without being more produced anteriorly. Head, pronotum and scutellum marmorate with yellowish-white, pale yellowish brown and brownish, paler on frons. Legs pale, femora and tibiae annulate with brownish. Tegmina yellowish brown, veins concolorous, crossveins suffused with dark fuscous; longitudinal veins (except subcostal and commissure), multiannulate with dark fuscous, appendix fuscate. Crossveins on brachial vein and in subcostal cell, oblique, the apical part of the subcostal apically elongate and acute, reaching nearly to the apex of tegmina; second subapical cell extending apically farther than the rest. Last sternite nearly truncate, pygophor elongate (with brownish ferruginous bristles), about as long as the ovipositor. Male: narrower than the other sex. Pronotum not marmorate. brownish yellow with pale, subpunctate spots. Face nearly immaculate (except base of frons). legs almost so. Genital segments not unlike those of Sarpestus specularis in form, except that the apical margin of the last sternite is wider. Length (male) 8 (female) 9½ mm. (Kirkaldy 1907).

Diagnosis References

Kirkaldy, G.W. 1907. Leafhoppers — Supplement (Hemiptera). Bulletin of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association Experimental Station Entomological Series 3: 1-186 [47–48]

History of changes