Species Distantessus iphis (Kirkaldy, 1907)

Distantessus iphis Kirkaldy, adult male.

© Copyright Murray Fletcher, Orange Agricultural Institute.

Distantessus iphis Kirkaldy, adult male, colour variant.

© Copyright Murray Fletcher, Orange Agricultural Institute.

Museums

Regional Maps

• Tartessus iphis Kirkaldy, G.W. 1907. Leafhoppers — Supplement (Hemiptera). Bulletin of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association Experimental Station Entomological Series 3: 1-186 [45].

  Type data:

   Holotype BPBM sex? (coll.: vii.1904), Nelson (= Gordonvale), Queensland
  Comment: Kirkaldy (1907) rarely indicated which of the specimens he examined was intended as the "type" but, in this case, he specified that the type was from Nelson (=Gordonvale) when he had additional specimens from Kuranda and Cairns. Presuming there is only one specimen in BPBM from Nelson, this can be recognised as the holotype by original designation.

Generic Combinations

• Distantessus iphis (Kirkaldy, 1907). —
  Evans, F. 1981. The Tartessinae of Australia, New Guinea and some adjacent Islands (Homoptera: Cicadellidae). Pacific Insects 23(1-2): 112-188 [137]

Introduction

This species is distributed along the mid to northern coastline of Queensland and has been collected at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. Its placement in a separate genus from species of Austrotartessus F. Evans is hard to justify.

Distribution

IBRA and IMCRA regions

IBRA

Brigalow Belt North (BBN), Cape York Peninsula (CYP), Wet Tropics (WT)

Ecological Descriptors

All stages: mangrove, phloem feeder.

Diagnosis

Male: vertex luteous, suffused (except basally) with sanguineous. Frons pale luteous suffused with sanguineous, a curved blackish band contiguous to the apical margin of the basal part of the frons; median third of length suffused with fuscous, with curved concentric fuscous lines extending over the yellowish-red ground colour. Genae (excluding a part of the apical margin very narrowly), clypeus and lora blackish. Pronotum and scutellum (except posterior third of latter which is paler) orange yellow. Tegmina pinkish brown, veins somewhat fuscate, some of them dark fuscous; commissure blackish; apex of apical cells (except the first sometimes) and the appendix, smoky. Sterna and sternites blackish or subsanguineous. Fore and middle legs testaceous, hind pair blackish. Head rounded in front, frons basally and pronotum strongly striate transversely, frons aciculate. Crossvein on brachial sometimes absent : second subapical cell extending beyond at least the third; subapical crossvein oblique. Female: like the male, but the vertex (excluding the pale greenish or luteous basal margin) is bright red brown; face black except a small red brown line on the genae on each side of the frons. Sterna and sternites mostly blackish. Pronotum and anterior two-thirds of the scutellum bright red brown. Legs testaceous; fore coxae and hind coxae and femora blackish, hind tibiae subapically more or less widely fulvous or pallid. Tegmina dull ferruginous, hyaline subapically, marked as in the male. Last abdominal segment produced, apically subangular, ovipositor a little longer than the pygophor (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 [45–46]

History of changes