Male terminalia of Cercopidae (Hemiptera, Cicadomorpha): towards a consensus terminology

Abstract

The study of male genital appendages is often necessary to identify a species and to characterise the higher systematics ranks for the Cercopidae, a large family of Hemiptera. Therefore, many authors have used them in their work but without any clear consensus on the terms used for each part constituting the male terminalia. A standardised terminology is important for the quality of a taxonomic description but even more essential when we want to compare species and establish a primary homology between states of character and their use in the frame of phylogenetic analysis. The use of a consensus terminology should ensure that we are all observing, speaking and describing the same genital appendage and comparing homologous characters. In order to propose a consensus terminology, we have reviewed all the major works on the anatomy of terminalia for the family since the first description using those characters in 1922. We proposed the use of consensual terms, listed with their definitions. In addition we studied a diversified panel of male specimens, chosen in order to represent as many Cercopidae tribes as possible. We categorised five different groups of Cercopidae according to their male terminalia structures. This opens the reflection on the evolutionary patterns for these structures.

Molecular phylogeny of Cercopidae (Hemiptera, Cercopoidea)

“…Considia of Considiini was classified under Callitettixinae (sensu Metcalf, 1961) together with Callitettixini. However, Considiini possess genitalia characters more similar to Cosmoscartinae (Le Cesne et al, 2021) than to Callitettixini classified here under Cercopinae. Paphnutius Distant, 1916 was not represented here but was transferred by Liang and Webb (1994) to Considiini from the New World Tomaspini based on some external and male genitalia characters.…”

“…Within Group 2, the genera encompassed by node 140 in Figure 3 or node 170 in Figure S5 are characterized by slender subgenital plates (Figure 6i,j), from the basal half for some taxa, and a single tibial spine on the posterior leg (Figure 6c). The presence of the sterno‐lateral plate (Le Cesne et al, 2021) (Figure 6j) between the pygofer and subgenital plate is observed in all taxa in this lineage, except for the Locris group (node 156, Figure 3, and node 179, Figure S5). This character is believed to characterize the Rhinaulacini and was previously observed and illustrated from its exemplars (Liang & Webb, 2002; Liang et al, 2012; Soulier‐Perkins & Kunz, 2012; Soulier‐Perkins & Le Cesne, 2016; Wang et al, 2018; Bouteille et al, 2021; Crispolon et al, 2019, Crispolon et al, 2021; Le Cesne & Soulier‐Perkins, 2021; Le Cesne et al, 2021).…”

More than 80 years without new taxa: analysis of morphological variation among members of Mexican Aeneolamia Fennah (Hemiptera, Cercopidae) support a new species in the genus

“…To manipulate specimens and take photographs, we used the method of Valdez-Carrasco (Castro-Valderrama et al 2018). The pygofer of some males of each taxon was Fennah (1949Fennah ( , 1953Fennah ( , 1968, Nast (1950), Hamilton (1977), , and Le Cesne et al (2021).…”

Malagasy spittlebugs (Hemiptera: Cercopidae), a taxonomic review of genera from Madagascar

“…For each taxon, descriptors and states have been illustrated in order to provide as much clarity as possible and to avoid errors in character interpretation. For genitalia descriptions, we used the terms proposed by Le Cesne et al (2021).…”