Family Delphacidae

Subfamily Delphacinae

Tribe Delphacini

Distribution: North America, especially eastern.

Type species (in original combination): Liburnia basivitta Van Duzee, 1909

Recognized species:

There is a single species in this genus:

Isodelphax basivitta Van Duzee, 1909 - Florida, Louisiana and Texas north to Ontario, New York and New Hampshire, west to Missouri and Colorado; reported also in California.

Recorded hosts: None?

Economic importance: Limited.  A common species in the eastern USA, but not reported on crops, except incidentally.

Recognition

Dark bodied in both male and female (although brachypters may be paler).  Not the absence of a dark spot on the wings at the apex of the clavus (in lateral view, you would see it near midlength of the wing where the wings meet); and notice that the first antennal segment is dark.  In the genitalia the shape of the parameres (widely spreading with a large point at the basal angle) is highly distinctive.  The carinae of the thorax and head are not as distinctly pale as they would be in Delphacodes puella (a common eastern species).

Isodelphax basivitta

Molecular resources:

At this time, neither Genbank or BOLD list sequence data for Isodelphax; however, Urban and colleagues (2010) extracted 18S rDNA, 28S rDNA, wingless, and cytochrome oxidase I from Isodelphax basivitta.

Selected References

Fennah, R. G. 1963. New Genera of Delphacidae (Homoptera: Fulgoroidea). Proceedings of the Royal Entomological Society, London (B) 32: 15-16. [not a good scan]

Van Duzee, E. P. 1897a. A Preliminary Review of the North American Delphacidae. Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 5(5): 225-261. [http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org]