Brazilian Homopteran help needed

Doug Yanega dyanega at MONO.ICB.UFMG.BR
Wed Oct 7 17:36:42 CDT 1998


Apologies for the crosspost. Two things have turned up in our lab here
recently, and I don't have (and haven't found) resources to deal with them,
so I though I'd ask around for pointers.
(1) Does anyone know of species or genus-level keys that will work for
Brazilian Psyllidae, or people who can ID them?
(2) Does anyone know of family-level keys that will work for Brazilian
Fulgoroidea? We have a species here that is extremely small (barely over 1
mm), and I very much doubt it's any of the families with which I'm familiar
from the US and Mexico, and I doubt I'd know a Tettigometrid if I tripped
over it (having never seen one in a collection). It has short,
strongly-spined legs, the head is extremely broad, square, and flattened to
a sharp transverse anterior margin (like a spade, overall), the antennae
have what look to be 8 segments (2 very stubby basal ones and 6 short
cylindrical ones), none of them filamentous (not like any Homopteran I
know, for that matter - but it *is* a Homopteran), and the wings are
translucent with reticulate venation, and sparse, tiny scales.
        There were some other tiny mystery "Homopterans" put aside here,
but it finally dawned on me they had to be Schizopterids or some such (they
look like a cross between a Cicadellid and a Mirid, with a stigma-like
thickening along the costa, not much like a normal hemelytron). I need a
copy of Schuh's book to nail that one down, though.

Thanks in advance,

Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG   BRAZIL
phone: 31-499-2579, fax: 31-499-2567  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82




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