Family Delphacidae

Subfamily Delphacinae

Tribe Delphacini

 

Type species (in original combination): Falcotoya aurinia Fennah, 1969

Distribution: Mostly Palearctic, also New Caledonia, China, Taiwan and one species in the New World.

Recognized species (distribution information may be incomplete)

Nine species are placed in this genus as follows

New World

1 Falcotoya crawfordi (Muir and Giffard) - Mexico

Old World

2 Falcotoya aurinia Fennah, 1969 - New Caledonia
3 Falcotoya citipes Fennah, 1969 - New Caledonia
4 Falcotoya daluoensis Ding, 2006 - China (Yunnan)
5 Falcotoya formosana Yang, 1989 - Taiwan
6 Falcotoya lyraeformis (Matsumura, 1900) - Japan (Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku)
7 Falcotoya minuscula (Horvath, 1897) - Afghanistan, Armenia, Egypt, France, Hungary, Iran, Kazakhstan, Oman, Russia Romania, Slovakia, Tadzhikistan, Turkey, Yugoslavia
8 Falcotoya shaluensis Yang, 1989 - Taiwan
9 Falcotoya sporoboli (Lindberg, 1958) - Cape Verde Islands, Egypt

 

Reported Hosts:

Falcotoya minuscula is reported from Bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers.).

Falcotoya sporoboli was described as occurring on salt grass (Sporobolus spicatus (Vahl.) Kunth.)

Host information from Wilson et al. (1994) and Lindberg (1958).

Economic Importance: Probably limited, although Falcotoya minuscula has been collected in settings where it may have an impact.  Falcotoya crawfordi is infrequently encountered.

 

Recognition

Members of this genus tend to be dark colored with prominent carinae on the thorax and head; the aedeagus is always strongly downcurved.

Falcotoya crawfordi

 

Falcotoya aurinia

Falcotoya formosana

Falcotoya minuscula

From Della Giustina and Remane, 1991.

 

Falcotoya shaluensis

 

Molecular resources

At this time, Genbank has no molecular resources for this genus. Bold has barcode sequence data for Falcotoya minuscula (here).

 

Selected References

della Giustina, W. and R. Remane. 1991. La faune de France des Delphacidae (Homoptera, Auchenorrhyncha). 3 - Recoltes et identifications 1991. Cahiers des Naturalistes 47(3): 49-60.

Ding, J. H. 2006. Fauna Sinica Insecta Vol. 45 Homoptera Delphacidae. Science Press, Beijing, China.

Drosopoulos, S. 1985. Zoogeographic and ecological relations between the planthopper-fauna of Greece and the adjacent countries (Homoptera, Delphacidae). 2nd Congres international sur la Zoogeographie et l’Ecoloie de la Grece et des Regions Avoisinantes, Athenes, Septembre 1981. Biologia Gallo-Hellenica 10(1-2): 275-286.

Fennah, R. G. 1969. Fulgoroidea (Homoptera) from New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands. Pacific Insects Monograph 21:1-116.

Lindberg, H. 1958. Hemiptera Insularum Caboverdensium. Societatis Scientiarium Fennica. Commentationes Biologicae 19(1): 1-246.

Wilson, S.W., C. Mitter, R.F. Denno, and M.R. Wilson. 1994. Evolutionary patterns of host plant use by delphacid planthoppers and their relatives. In: R.F. Denno and T.J. Perfect, (eds.). Planthoppers: Their Ecology and Management. Chapman and Hall, New York. Pp. 7-45 & Appendix. [Host information in appendix.]

Yang, C. T. 1989. Delphacidae of Taiwan II (Homoptera: Fulgoroidea). NSC Special Publications 6: 1-334.