Aganacris nitida
| Aganacris nitida | ||||||||||||
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Aganacris nitida, male, caught in 2014 at night in Panguana , Peru with a chloroform trap at a height of 20 meters. From the holdings of the Zoological State Collection in Munich. |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Aganacris nitida | ||||||||||||
| ( Perty , 1832) |
Aganacris nitida is a Katydid art from the family of the Tettigoniidae . In their habitus, females and males imitate wasps of the families Pompilidae or Sphecidae ( mimicry ). This isvery unusualfor locusts , many related species are cryptically colored or imitate leaves.
features
Females of the species reach a body length of 26 to 37 millimeters, for males 29 to 35 millimeters are given. The animals are predominantly black in color, smooth and shiny. The coloring of the forewings ( Tegmina ) is gender-specific: in the female, the forewings are tinted black and translucent, the forewings are somewhat constricted in the middle. As a result, they resemble numerous defensive wasp species, for example the genus Hemipepsis . In the male, the wings are predominantly crystal clear (hyaline) with a dark spot on each wing tip; they resemble defensive wasps of the genus Erimnophila with which they occur in the same habitat and which they also imitate in behavior. The middle antennae of the females are bright orange, the tergites of the middle abdominal segments have yellow bands, the hind legs have two, rarely just one, light yellow to whitish spots. The vertex is slightly higher than the eyes and sloping forward. The part protruding between the eyes (called the fastigium) is compressed laterally, rounded triangular when viewed from above. The pronotum is saddle-shaped. The ovipositor is eight to nine millimeters long, it protrudes backwards over the wing tips in the rest position. It is curved upwards with slightly serrated edges, with smooth sides. The subgenital plate of the males is elongated, about three times as long as it is wide. The cerci are pointed.
distribution
The species lives in northern, tropical South America, in the tropical rainforest . There are finds from the Amazon basin , from Guyana to Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, to Ecuador and Peru. Little is known about the biology and way of life of the species. It is both diurnal and nocturnal.
Taxonomy
Aganacris nitida was collected by Johann Baptist von Spix in Brazil and described as Scaphura nitida by his successor Maximilian Perty . It was transferred by the entomologist Francis Walker as a type species in the newly established genus Aganacris . Aganacris micans Walker is a synonym . The lectotype is in the Zoological State Collection in Munich .
The genus Aganacris includes two species, A. nitida and A. vetulina . Both show a striking wasp mimicry and are known from tropical rainforests in South America . A. vetulina occurs in Panama and Colombia , A. nitida in the entire Amazon basin. Since males and females of both species differ significantly from each other, they were originally described as different species, the males of A. nitida as the synonymized "species" Aganacris sphex (Rehn, 1918) and Aganacris pseudosphex Grant, 1958.
Sources and References
literature
- David A. Nickle: Synonymies of wasp-mimicking species within the katydid genus Aganacris (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae: Phaneropterinae) . In: Journal of Orthoptera Research 21 (2), 2012, pp. 245-250, doi : 10.1665 / 034.021.0209 .
- Harold J. Grant Jr. (1958): A Revision of the Genus Aganacris (Orthoptera; Tettigoniidae; Phaneropterinae). Notula Naturae of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia No. 306, 12 pp.
Individual evidence
- ^ Orthoptera Species File Online
- ↑ Baehr (1983) The types of the orders Mantodea and Saltatoria, Ensifera, Spixiana (Munich) Suppl. No. described by M. Perty in the Zoological State Collection in Munich. 9: 283-290
- ↑ Nickle, DA & JL Castner, 1995. Strategies by Katydids against diurnal predators in rainforest of northeastern Peru. Journal of Orthoptera Research, No. 4: 75-88, p. 78