Page:Paraplangia sinespeculo, a new genus and species of bush-cricket, with notes on its biology and a key to the genera of Phaneropterinae (Orthoptera, Tettigonioidea) from Madagascar.pdf/1

 Research Article

1 Grillenstieg 18, D-39120 Magdeburg, Germany. 2 Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Frankfurt (Main), Germany. 3 Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy. 4 Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland.

Corresponding author: Klaus-Gerhard Heller (heller.volleth@t-online.de)

Academic editor: Juliana Chamorro-Rengifo | Received 5 February 2018 | Accepted 19 March 2018 | Published 23 July 2018

http://zoobank.org/49DE9A41-355D-40B0-8612-949CF113449B

Citation: Heller K-G, Hemp C, Massa B, Kociński M, Warchałowska-Śliwa E (2018) Paraplangia sinespeculo, a new genus and species of bush-cricket, with notes on its biology and a key to the genera of Phaneropterinae (Orthoptera: Tettigonioidea) from Madagascar. Journal of Orthoptera Research 27(2): 143–153. https://doi.org/10.3897/jor.27.24243

Abstract

Madagascar is a well-known hotspot of biodiversity. However, many Orthoptera, and especially the Tettigonioidea, belong to little-studied groups. Here we describe a new genus and species of bush-cricket reared from field-collected eggs. Paraplangia sinespeculo gen. nov., sp. nov. belongs to Phaneropterinae and shares diagnostic characteristics with members of the tribe Amblycoryphini and its African subtribe Plangiina stat. nov. Paraplangia, which has a chromosome number of 31 X0, differs from other African members of the tribe and subtribe such as Eurycorypha and Plangia, which both have 29 X0. In addition to morphology, we describe the male calling song, female acoustic response, and mating behavior. As calling song, the male produces two series of short syllables. At the end of the second series the female responds with signals of similar duration and spectral composition as the male sounds (peak about 8-9 kHz). To make future identification easier, a key to all genera of Phaneropterinae found in Madagascar is presented.

Key words

Amblycoryphini, bioacoustics, chromosomes, duetting, Orophus

Introduction

The island of Madagascar is well known for its richness of endemic species. It is considered to be a very important hotspot of biodiversity due to several factors. Madagascar is a very large island, which is large enough to minimize the risk of extinction once a species has established. It is close enough to the mainland to receive occasional continental immigrants, but is far enough to allow a long, independent evolution of the fauna (MacArthur and Wilson 1967). Madagascar was formerly part of a continent (for a review see Vences et al. 2009). It separated from Gondwana about 135 million years ago (e.g. Briggs 2003, Yoder and Nowak 2006, McIntyre et al. 2017), so parts of its fauna and flora may be of Gondwanan origin. Then, for some time Madagascar and India drifted north-eastwards together, until their connection also broke (about 90 million years ago) and Madagascar remained isolated in the Indian Ocean. It was, however, never very far from Africa, and even non-flying mammals seem to have crossed this channel several times (Ali and Huber 2010). Therefore, the time at which the Malagasy taxa diverged from their closest relatives varies greatly, and there are many publications dealing with this question for different groups of animals and plants. However, even more groups, especially insect groups, are still nearly completely unstudied.

One of these groups is bush-crickets (katydids; Tettigonioidea). Most studies on this group in this region were conducted before 1914, when the last comprehensive paper appeared (Carl 1914). Only very recently have some papers on selected groups been published (Massa 2017a,b,c,d, Ünal and Beccaloni 2017). There are no published data on the biology of any taxon (except some observations in Ünal and Beccaloni 2017). At present, four subfamilies of Tettigonioidea are represented by several species each in Madagascar, and Listroscelidinae is represented by a single species (all data according to Cigliano et al. 2018, abbreviated OSFO). The four more common subfamilies have quite different biogeographic patterns in terms of their Malagasy fauna. Pseudophyllinae and Meconematinae are represented with relatively few species each and only endemic species or genera are known. All Pseudophyllinae (except the phyllophorine-like genus Aspidonotus) belong to the tribe Simoderini which consists of species that occur exclusively in Australia and Madagascar. If this tribe was confirmed as a monophyletic unit, it would be a strong indication for a Gondwanan origin of the group. The subfamily Conocephalinae has many species in Madagascar and most genera are endemic, but there are also a few endemic species of the widespread genera Conocephalus and Ruspolia and even non-endemic species [Conocephalus maculatus (Le Guillou, 1841) (“Madagasian Region” Pitkin 1980), Pseudorhynchus hastifer (Schaum, 1853) and the swarm-producing (see Bailey and McCrae 1978) Ruspolia differens (Serville, 1838)]. Most conocephaline genera belong to the tribe Euconchophorini, which is endemic to Madagascar and some surrounding islands. Gorochov (1988) considered this group of short-winged species as a sister group to all other world-wide distributed Conocephalinae. However, in a