The genus Arctorthezia Cockerell (Hemiptera, Ortheziidae) with the description of a new species.

M. Bora Kaydan,Zsuzsanna Konczné Benedicty,Ferenc Kozár,Hirotaka Tanaka,Kinga Fetykó,Éva Szita

doi:10.3897/zookeys.472.8928

Abstract

This paper describes a new species of Arctorthezia Cockerell (Hemiptera: Coccoidea: Ortheziidae) from the Palaearctic region. The specimens were extracted from forest litter in the collections of Muséum d’histoire Naturelle de Genève, Switzerland, using Berlese funnels. Three further species, Arctorthezia cataphracta (Olafsen), Arctorthezia occidentalis (Douglas) and Arctorthezia pseudoccidentalis Morrison, are redescribed and re-illustrated. The genus Arctorthezia now contains five species. An identification key, diagnostic illustrations, photographs of unmounted females and new locality records of the Arctorthezia species currently known are provided.

Highlights

Ensign scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea: Ortheziidae) are considered to be one of the most ancient families of the Coccoidea (Koteja 1996, Vea and Grimaldi 2012) and are thought to be either ‘ancestral’ to all scale insects or a ‘primitive’, isolated branch of the grade of families, the archaeococcoids (Vea and Grimaldi 2012)
The specimens examined in this study were mostly from the scale insect collections of the Plant Protection Institute, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (PPI) and the Muséum d’histoire Naturelle de Genève (MHNG)
The holotype of the new species is deposited in the Muséum d’histoire Naturelle de Genève collection (MHNG), and the paratypes are shared between MHNG and PPI

Summary

Introduction

Ensign scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea: Ortheziidae) are considered to be one of the most ancient families of the Coccoidea (Koteja 1996, Vea and Grimaldi 2012) and are thought to be either ‘ancestral’ to all scale insects or a ‘primitive’, isolated branch of the grade of families, the archaeococcoids (Vea and Grimaldi 2012). There are approximately 212 described species of Ortheziidae to date, classified in 21 genera (including four extinct genera) (Vea and Grimaldi 2012). In Ortheziidae, two main groups of host plant specialization can be observed; the first group is composed of species that occur in leaf litter (feeding on roots and fungal mycelia), and on mosses and lichens; the second group feeds on vascular plants, including grasses, herbaceous and woody plants (Koteja 1996, Kozár 2004, Vea and Grimaldi 2012). The monotypic tribe Arctortheziini includes only one genus, Arctorthezia Cockerell, which contains four living species: A. cataphracta (Olafsen), A. occidentalis (Douglas), A. pseudoccidentalis Morrison and A. vardziae Hadzibejli (Richard 1998) and one extinct species (Koteja and Zak-Ogaza 1988). One new Arctorthezia species is described from the Palaearctic region (Switzerland); three species, namely A. cataphracta (Olafsen), A. occidentalis (Douglas), A. pseudoccidentalis Morrison, are redescribed and re-illustrated; an identification key and new additional locality records for the currently known Arctorthezia species are provided; and macromorphological characters are illustrated and discussed

Material and methods

Result and discussion