Lepocranus and Valalyllum gen. nov. (Orthoptera, Tetrigidae, Cladonotinae), endangered Malagasy dead-leaf-like grasshoppers

Abstract

Only two leaf-like pygmy grasshopper species and specimens are known from Madagascar: the Leatherback Pygmy Grasshopper (Lepocranus fuscus Devriese, 1991) —which has a relatively low median carina of the pronotum; and the Malagasy Litterhopper (Valalyllum foliumgen. et. sp. nov.), herein described — which has a high median carina. Lepocranus fuscus is known from the rainforests around Tampolo, Manakambahiny, and Mahavelona (Foulpointe). The new taxon, Valalyllum foliumgen. et. sp. nov. is known only from the Belanono forest. Both species inhabit northeastern Madagascar. The new species could be rare or not-easy-to-spot in the rainforest leaf litter, where it most probably lives. A new tribe, Valalyllinitrib. nov., is described for the two mentioned genera because its members are different from the Caribbean leaf-like Choriphyllini Cadena-Castañeda & Silva, 2019, from the African leaf-like Xerophyllini Günther, 1979, and from the Asian leaf-like Cladonotini Bolívar, 1887. A tabular key to the tribes of Cladonotinae with leaf-like representatives is provided, together with photographs of type specimens of both species belonging to the newly described tribe. The holotype of the new species belongs to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle Orthoptera collection, Paris.

Caribbean pygmy jumping leaves (Tetrigidae, Cladonotinae, Choriphyllini)

“…nov. from Cuba, based on a male holotype from MNCN. Taxonomy follows the recent classification of Cladonotinae used in the Orthoptera Species File (Silva et al 2019;Cigliano et al 2022;Deranja et al 2022). Terminology and measurements follow Devriese (1999) and Tumbrinck (2014), except that we introduce the term capital sinus for the sinus between the anterior projection of the pronotal crest and the lateral vertical edge of prozona/paranota (see Fig.…”

A new tribe of the pygmy grasshoppers subfamily Cladonotinae (Orthoptera: Tetrigidae)

“…The family Tetrigidae is divided into seven subfamilies: Batrachideinae, Cladonotinae, Lophotettiginae, Metrodorinae, Scelimeninae, Teriginae, and Tripetalocerinae (Cigliano et al, 2022). Within the subfamily Cadonotinae, five monophyletic tribes exist, such as Caribbean Choriphyllini, South American Mucrotettigini, African Xerophyllini, Madagascarian Vavallini, and Asian Cladonotini (Deranja et al, 2022) but most genera require revision and are not adequately classified in the Tetrigidae system (Zha et al, 2017;Skejo et al, 2019;Bhaskar et al, 2020;Deng, 2020;Storozhenko, 2021). Here, five genera of the pygmy grasshoppers subfamily Clanonotinae from Asia and New Guinea are placed in a new tribe.…”