The True Water Bugs (Nepomorpha)

Abstract

The infraorder Nepomorpha is one of the most specialized groups of heteropterans, with most of its species spending the entire life cycle within the water. True water bugs include ten families, 52 genera, and approximately 730 species in the Neotropical region, which shelters about 30 % of the global diversity of the group. Despite this fact, little is known about their biology, ecology, and geographical distribution in the Neotropics. Several genera need to be revised and many species remain with outdated descriptions. The systematics of the infraorder, although has received little attention in recent years, remains with various unresolved questions, and no phylogenetic study was conducted for any endemic group of this region.

Revisiting habitat and lifestyle transitions in Heteroptera (Insecta: Hemiptera): insights from a combined morphological and molecular phylogeny

“…Nepomorpha, the true aquatic bugs, with 2400 species in 11–13 families (depending on classification) and five superfamilies (Polhemus and Polhemus, ; Barbosa and Rodrigues, ), are only slightly more speciose than the Gerromorpha, but show a broader range of morphologies, habitats and feeding types. While the majority of nepomorphan bugs live within aquatic habitats, some species are terrestrial, presumably due to secondary terrestrialization (Mahner, ; Hebsgaard et al., ).…”

Environmental Correlates of Sexual Signaling in the Heteroptera: A Prospective Study

“…The Heteroptera are being increasingly well-studied in terms of their ecology, life history, and behavior [45][46][47][48][49][50]. There are four main forms of sexual communication present within this sub-order: chemical communication, including sex pheromones [51,52]; stridulation [53][54][55]; substrate-borne vibration signals [4,[56][57][58]; tactile communication via antennation [49,58,59].…”

“…One limitation of the Heteroptera in sound production is their small size, causing stridulation to be energetically costly, producing sounds of a high frequency which quickly degrade through space [8]. This issue may increase exponentially for cryptic species dwelling in leaf litter, which are often smaller in size than heteropterans found in plant or semi-aquatic habitats, resulting in this form of communication perhaps being energetically detrimental and therefore less common [45,47,49,50].…”

Ampliación en la distribución biogeográfica de la familia Pleidae (Hemiptera: Nepomorpha) en Colombia

“…Dentro del infraorden Nepomorpha la superfamilia Pleoidea está constituida por las familias Helotrephidae y Pleidae (Schuh & Slater, 1995;Barbosa & Rodrigues, 2015). Los Pleidae forman un pequeño grupo que actualmente está conformado por cuatro géneros y alrededor de 38 especies descritas (Polhemus & Polhemus, 2007;Mazzuconni et al, 2008;Cook, 2011;Barbosa & Rodrigues, 2015;Cook et al, 2020), son insectos cosmopolitas y algunos representantes están distribuidos en todo el mundo, pero su mayor diversidad ocurre en los trópicos (Mazzucconi, 2008;Papácek, 2013). Paraplea se encuentra ampliamente distribuido mundialmente; mientras, el género Plea está registrado únicamente en el viejo mundo con una única especie: P. minutissima y una subespecie: P. m. tassilii Poisson.…”