Some new species of Phaneroptera, Eulioptera and Scolocerca (Orthoptera Tettigoniidae: Phaneropterinae) from West Tropical Africa
Author
Massa, Bruno
0000-0003-2127-0715
Department of Agriculture, Food and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Viale Scienze 13, 90128 Palermo, Italy (retired) bruno. massa @ unipa. it; https: // orcid. org / 0000 - 0003 - 2127 - 0715
bruno.massa@unipa.it
text
Zootaxa
2021
2021-03-18
4948
1
123
135
journal article
7555
10.11646/zootaxa.4948.1.7
3cec2643-a3a9-4104-97f0-2d1ed963f772
1175-5326
4616211
E83576E9-1B49-4D85-B02C-7DE1CB219CA1
Phaneroptera sparsa
Stål, 1857
(
Figs. 1-16
)
Material examined
. 162³,
208♀
from the following African countries:
Zambia
(9³,
10♀
)
,
Tanzania
(2³,
2♀
)
,
Ethiopia
(4³,
6♀
)
,
Cameroon
(3³,
2♀
)
,
Gabon
(4³,
1♀
)
,
Angola
(2³,
2♀
)
,
Central African Republic
(12³,
16♀
)
,
Côte d’Ivoire
(94³,
118♀
)
,
Togo
(8³,
9♀
)
,
Liberia
(2³,
2♀
)
,
Burkina Faso
(15³,
23♀
)
,
Senegal
(8³,
17♀
)
,
Morocco
(1³,
1♀
)
,
Tunisia
(1³,
1♀
) (
ANHRT
and
BMPC
)
.
Remarks
.
P. sparsa
was described based on a female specimen from
South Africa
; it is certainly the most common and widespread species of the genus in tropical Africa (see
Naskrecki & Guta 2019
).
Ragge (1980)
synonymized
P. africana
Steinmann, 1966
with
P. sparsa
; actually the true differences with
P. sparsa
are the small size and the v-shaped subgenital plate (
Steinmann 1966
); thanks to Gellért Puskás, it was possible to receive some very good photos of the cerci, subgenital plate and stridulatory file of the
holotype
from
Guinea
(the only specimen known of this taxon) (
Figs. 1-2
). The comparison of the stridulatory file with that of specimens of
P. sparsa
from
Togo
(
Fig. 4
) and
Central African Republic
(
Fig. 5
) does not reveal any differences, while the subgenital plate of
P. africana
(
Fig. 6
) is very different from the typical subgenital plate of
P. sparsa
. However, it has been observed in some male specimens from tropical Africa a certain variability in this character; thus, the synonymy proposed by
Ragge (1980)
has to be definitively accepted.
Ragge (1980)
, in raising
P. sparsa
to species level, highlighted that it has a very wide geographic distribution, including Arabian Peninsula,
Madagascar
, occurring also in south-eastern
Spain
and extending through the Levant, across the Anatolian Steppe to
Armenia
, and along the northern border of
Iran
to the Hindu Kush. However, the Turkish specimen bioacoustically recorded by
Heller (1988)
shows a different stridulatory file from
P. sparsa
(
Fig. 3
), with many more teeth than in African specimens. Some specimens examined from
Oman
(
Fig. 7
), United Arabian Emirates (
Massa
et al
. 2010
, as
P. sparsa
;
Fig. 8
), and
Socotra
(
Yemen
) belong to a different taxon from
P. sparsa
, as well as from
P. nana
Fieber, 1853
(
Figs. 10-16
), the latter being also variable in the shape of cerci, but less in the stridulatory file. The shapes of the subgenital plate (
Fig. 9
) and the stridulatory file of the specimens from
Socotra
,
Oman
and Emirates are very similar to those of
P. cleomis
Ayal, Broza et Pener, 1974
(cf. Ayal
et al
. 1974). The presence of
P. sparsa
in the Middle East, and possibly also in the Iberian Peninsula should be confirmed with more consistent data.