A new apterous Blissidae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Lygaeoidea) from Ecuador and the first blissid with a tymbal-like organ

MINGUETTI E.; BRAUN, H.; MATT, F.; DELLAPÉ, PABLO M.

La Plata

Encuentro; Sixth Quadrennial Meeting of the International Heteropterists? Society; 2018

The worldwide distributed family Blissidae, includes species that feed exclusively on the sap of monocots. According to Lygaeoidea SpeciesFile, the family comprehends 421 speciesand 28 subspecies in 54 genera. Nineteen genera occur in the Western Hemisphere, and excepting the cosmopolitan genus Ischnodemus Fieber, the other 18 are restricted to the Western Hemisphere. Many blissids are fully macropterous or submacropterous, but also many taxa present some degree of forewing reduction or modification, and several micropterous and only one apterous form are known. Among the six micropterous genera from the Western Hemisphere the genera Aulacoblissus Slater known from Venezuela, Barrerablissus Brailovsky from Ecuador, Heteroblissus Barber from Argentina and Brazil, Napoblissus Brailovsky & Barrera from Ecuador, and Wheelerodemus Henry & Sweet from USA are monotypic; and the genus Praetorblissus Slater includes six species from Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru and Bolivia. All these species, excepting P. wilcoxae, present a micropterous condition. The genus Howdenoblissus ?tys, described to accommodate the new species H. slateri, known from a single female from Colombia, constitute the first apterous species in the Lygaeoidea. In this contribution, a new genus and a new apterous species from the Ecuadorian mountain rainforest is described. The apterous condition in this new species, with only small protuberances representing forewings is similar, but more extreme, to the "neotenous apterism" exhibited in Howdenoblissus. We also recorded the male drumming inside leaf sheaths of bamboo. The low frequency sound emitted, the up and down vibration of abdomen observed in the field, and the fused first two tergites that are folded on both sides of the middle line are consistent with a tymbal mechanism. Tymbal organ have been reported in several families of Heteroptera, but in Lygaeoidea it was only observed in a very few species. This constitute the first record in the Blissidae. Digital photographs of the adults, and main characters including the male genitalia are provided, as well as oscillograms of the low frequency vibrational song.