Family Caliscelidae

Subfamily Caliscelinae

Tribe Caliscelini Amyot et Serville, 1843

Genus Caliscelis de Laporte, 1833

Type species: Caliscelis heterodoxa de Laporte, 1833; jr. syn. of Fulgora bonellii Latreille, 1807.

Synonyms:

    = Caloscelis Burmeister, 1835; replacement name for Caliscelis de Laporte, 1833).
    = Phyllocnemis Schaum, 1850 (Type species Caloscelis stemmalis Burmeister, 1835); syn. with Caloscelis Burmeister 1835 by Marschall 1873: 377.
    = Mejonosoma Costa, 1834 (Type species Mejonosoma grisea Costa, 1834; jr. syn. of Fulgora bonellii Latreille, 1807); syn. by Puton 1883: 287.

Distribution: Palearctic and Afrotropical; adventive into California..

Recognized species

There are 22 species currently in the genus plus 1 subspecies.  Caliscelis bonellii is adventive into California.  (Since the other species are Palearctic, I will more carefully compile the distribution data later).

1 Caliscelis affinis (Fieber, 1876) - Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Italy, Russia, Ukraine
2 Caliscelis berenice Linnavuori, 1973
3 Caliscelis bolivari Horváth, 1904
4 Caliscelis bonellii (Latreille, 1807) - USA: CA (adventive); Palearctic (Mediterranean region; Austria, Croatia, France, Herzegovina, “Hungary”, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Sardinia, Serbia, Sicily, Spain)
  Caliscelis bonellii var nigra Melichar, 1906 - Italy, Austria
5 Caliscelis chinensis Melichar, 1906 - China
6 Caliscelis dimidiata Costa, 1863 - Italy (inc. Sicily), Spain, Portugal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco

   Caliscelis eximia (Stål, 1859) - in Chirodisca, according to Gnezdilov & Bourgoin (2009) (Sri lanka, India)
7 Caliscelis ferganensis Kusnezov, 1930 - Kyrgyzstan
8 Caliscelis gissarica Kusnezov, 1930 - Uzbekistan.
9 Caliscelis gracilis Mitjaev, 1971
10 Caliscelis longimana Emeljanov, 1972
11 Caliscelis maroccana Horváth, 1904 - Morocco
12 Caliscelis nero Fennah, 1967 - Congo, Lesotho (Basutoland).
13 Caliscelis orientalis Ouchi, 1940 - China
14 Caliscelis rhabdocladis Che, Wang & Zhang, 2011 - China
15 Caliscelis stemmalis (Burmeister, 1835) - Brazil
16 Caliscelis swazi Gnezdilov & Bourgoin, 2009 - South Africa, Swaziland
17 Caliscelis terauchii (Matsumura, 1915) - Korea, Japan
18 Caliscelis tricolor (Costa, 1834) - Italy
19 Caliscelis triplicata Che, Wang & Zhang, 2011 - China
20 Caliscelis unicolor (Costa, 1834) - Italy
21 Caliscelis wallengreni (Stål, 1863) - Central and eastern Mediterranean region, southeastern Europe, steppe region of central Asia (Russia, France, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Turkestan, Turkey, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Italy).
22 Caliscelis zarudnyi Mitjaev, 1971

[Locality data mostly from Metcalf 1958]

Economic Importance: Limited.

Known host plants: 

Caliscelis bonellii - 'presumably Poaceae'; Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. (Bermudagrass, Poaceae)

Caliscelis wallengreni - Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. (common reed, Poaceae)

Hosts from Holzinger et al. 2003, Wilson et al. 1994; plant names from USDA PLANTS.

Recognition:

Highly distinctive among North American taxa - strong sexual dimorphism, front legs greatly modified.

Caliscelis bonellii (left male, right female) (Specimens from California)

Collecting

Most often taken sweeping.

Molecular resources: No data for this genus appears on GenBank or Barcode of Life. 

Selected references:

Che, Y. L., Y. L. Wang, and Y. L. Zhang. 2011. Two new species and one new record of the genus Caliscelis de Laporte (Hemiptera: Fulgoroidea: Caliscelidae) from China. Zootaxa 3067: 35-48.

Gnezdilov, V. M. and T. Bourgoin. 2009. First record of the family Caliscelidae (Hemiptera: Fulgoroidea) from Madagascar, with description of new taxa from the Afrotropical Region and biogeographical notes. Zootaxa 2020: 1-36.

Holzinger, W.E., I. Kammerlander, and H. Nickel. 2003. The Auchenorrhyncha of Central Europe. Volume 1. Fulgoromorpha, Cicadomorpha excluding Cicadellidae. Brill Academic Publishing, Leiden, Netherlands.

Metcalf, Z. P. 1958. General Catalogue of the Homoptera. Fascicle IV, Fulgoroidea, Part 15, Issidae. Waverly Press, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland.

O'Brien, L. B. 1967. Caliscelis bonellii (Latreille), a European genus of Issidae new to the United States (Homoptera: Fulgoroidea). Pan-Pacific Entomologist 43: 130-133.

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