A new species of Oeda (Hemiptera: Membracidae: Stegaspidinae) from Madre de Dios, Peru

Abstract

Sociedade Brasileira de Zoologia | www.sbzoologia.org.br | www.scielo.br/zool All content of the journal, except where identified, is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type BY-NC.Oeda Amyot & Serville, 1843 is one of the most distinctive and remarkable of all treehopper genera. Species of the genus are easily recognizable by their enormously inflated, translucent and reticulate-textured pronotum. They are distributed throughout the lowland tropical rainforest areas of South America and in Central America as far north as Costa Rica. The function of the bizarre pronotal modifications in the genus are unknown but previous authors have speculated that they mimic plant parts or that the inflated pronotal process breaks off as a defense mechanism against predators (CRYAN & DEITZ 1999). FABRICIUS (1787) described a species, from Cayenne, French Guyana, which he characterized as "Thoracis folio inflato testaceo reticulato" and named it as Membracis inflata.AMYOT & SERVILLE (1843) created Oeda to include Fabricius' species Membracis inflata. WESTWOOD (1842) described Smilia informis from Brazil. FAIRMAIRE (1846) reorganized the so called "Tribu des Membracides" and, in regard to Oeda, he not only redescribed the genus together with O. inflata (Fabricius), but also included two other species: Oeda inermis, a new one from Brazil, characterized as "thorace antice inermis" (with an indication that it was equal to O. inflata in the sense of Perty), and O. informis (Westwood) whose description the author sent to Fairmaire -"Albida, pronoto maximo valde inflato, totum corpus obtegente, in medio constricto, et ad apicem spina armato; dorso irregulariter areolato; areis, praesertim posticis, maximis, fusco interdum marginatis et maculatis; alis anticis venis crassis punctoque subapicali fuscis.". STÅL (1869), dealing with membracids described by Fabricius, discovered that O. inflata treated by FAIRMAIRE (1846) was based on a different species than O. inflata of Fabricius. According to the description given by Fairmaire the pronotum bears two processes anteriorly -"thorace antice bihamato". Therefore, STÅL (1869)

Treehoppers (Hemiptera: Aetalionidae and Membracidae) from Madre de Dios region, Peru

“…Costa (2009) assembled a list of 42 species, 30 genera, 16 tribes and 6 subfamilies of the treehoppers found in the cloud forests at Manu National Park (PNM) and neighboring places at Cuzco and Madre de Dios. Recently, a new species Oeda mielkei (Stegaspidinae) was described from the Madre de Dios region (Sakakibara 2014). Ekkens (1971Ekkens ( , 1972 reported ecological and behavioral observations of various treehoppers in the Oxapampa rainforest.…”