Wednesday 14 January 2015

A new species of Planthopper from Central Vietnam.


Planthoppers are small members of the True Bug order Hemiptera, which live by sucking sap from plants in a similar way to Aphids (which are also Hemipterans). In 1923 L Melichar described the genus Orthophana to describe a single species from Malaysia. A second species was described from North Vietnam in 2014.

In a paper published in the Belgian Journal of Entomology on 13 November 2014, Jérôme Constant of the Department of Entomology at the RoyalBelgian Institute of Natural Sciences and Hong Thai Pham of the VietnamNational Museum of Nature of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, describe a new species of Orthophana from Bidoup-Nui Ba National Park in Lam Dong Province, Central Vietnam.

The new species is named Orthophana bidoupensis, meaning ‘from Bidoup’. The species is described from a single male specimen collected with a Malaise trap in moist evergreen mountain forest at an altitude of 1400 m. The specimen is 11.9 mm in length, and brown in colour, with strongly curved forewings raised above the body.

Orthophana bidoupensisin lateral view. Constant & Pham (2014).

See also…

http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/a-new-species-of-fern-feeding-aphid.htmlA new species of Fern-feeding Aphid from Thailand.                                                               Aphids are small Hemipteran Insects (True Bugs) that live on plants, draining sap with specialized mouthparts. They can reproduce extremely rapidly as they are...

Leafhoppers are small members of the True Bug order Hemiptera, closely related to Cicadas. They are typically small and inconspicuous as individuals, seldom more than a few millimetres in length, but in large numbers...
 Froghoppers (Cercopoidea) are small members of the True Bug order (Hemiptera), related to Cicadas (Cicadoidea), Leafhoppers and Treehoppers...


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