A new species of the Oriental leafhopper genus Kutara Distant (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae: Deltocephalinae) from Vietnam

The Oriental leafhopper genus Kutara Distant, 1908 (Cicadellidae: Deltocephalinae: Drabescini: Paraboloponina) is newly recorded from Vietnam with description of a new species K. trispinosa Xu & Zhang sp. nov.. An updated checklist, with distribution and a key to males of Kutara, are also provided. The type specimens of the new species are deposited in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France (MNHN) and the Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, USA (INHS).

The Prairie Chicken in Illinois

The present report summarizes a study of the biology and management of the greater prairie chicken in Illinois, a study begun in 1935 by members of the Section of Game Research and Management of the Illinois Natural History Survey. The summers of 1935 and 1936 were spent in full-time field work in southeastern Illinois. Since that time, supplemental studies of prairie chicken habits, requirements and distribution have been continued in various parts of the state. Annuallysince 1935, spring and fall censuses have been made on 4 square miles of prairie chicken range in Jasper County used as a study area. The present report includes data on earlv distribution, present range, life history, populations, mortality causes, food habits and management of the prairie chicken in Illinois.

TaxonWorks: An experience of migrating large datasets into the new cybertaxonomic infrastructure

TaxonWorks (http://taxonworks.org) in an integrated, open-source, cybertaxonomic web application serving taxonomists and biodiversity scientists. It is designed to facilitate efficient data capture, storage, manipulation, and retrieval. It integrates a wide variety of data types used by biodiversity scientists, including, but not limited to, taxonomy (with validation based on codes of zoological, botanical, bacterial, and viral nomenclature), specimen data, bibliographies, media (images, PDFs, sounds, videos), morphology (character/trait matrices), distribution, biological associations. Available TaxonWorks web interfaces currently provide various data entry forms for simple and advanced querying of the database. TaxonWorks has integrated batch uploader functionality. But, for larger datasets, specialized migration scripts were used. Several projects, historically build in 3i (http://dmitriev.speciesfile.org), MX (http://mx.phenomix.org), SpeciesFiles (http://software.speciesfile.org), and other databases, have been or are being migrated into TaxonWorks. Of the projects moving into TaxonWorks, it is worth mentioning several: 3i World Auchenorrhyncha Database, LepIndex, Universal Chalcidoidea Database, Orthoptera SpeciesFile, Plecoptera SpeciesFile, Illinois Natural History Survey Insect Collection database, and several others. An experience of the data migration will be shared during the presentation.

Specimens, Databases, and Accession Books: Using TaxonWorks to Integrate Multiple Sources of Modern and Historical Data in the INHS Insect Collection

Grant-supported digitization projects over the past 20 years at the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) have yielded over 1,000,000 occurrence records (representing over 2.7 million specimens), one of the most successful digitization efforts within the United States. However, receiving multiple grants at the cutting edge has led to numerous projects left at various stages of completeness, several relational databases, orphaned data, and specimens at various stages of curation. TaxonWorks (taxonworks.org), an integrated web-based workbench developed by the Species File Group and supported by the INHS and the National Science Foundation, has provided the digital infrastructure to unify multiple workflows, projects, databases, and even historical accession books into one easy to access, open-source platform. We demonstrate the practical utility of this platform and summarize past, present, and future efforts at the INHS towards integrating all our data within TaxonWorks.

Taxonomía, distribución y biología de la tribu Saccharosydnini (Insecta, Hemiptera, Fulguromorpha)

En la presente contribución se estudia la taxonomía de la Tribu Saccharosydnini (Hemiptera, Fulgoromorpha, Delphacidae) y su diversidad en la Argentina; además se describen los estados inmaduros de las 2 especies más frecuentemente representadas en los sistemas agrícolas de la Argentina: Lacertinella australis (Remes Lenicov & Rossi Batiz) 2011 y Saccharosydne subandina Remes Lenicov & Rossi Batiz 2010. También se abordan aspectos poblacionales de la especie nativa L. australis a través de estudios a campo y en condiciones de laboratorio. Se presenta una síntesis del conocimiento de la familia en el mundo, en especial en la región Neotropical. Se mencionan generalidades de los Hemiptera Auchenorrhyncha y, dentro de los Fulgoromorpha, de la familia Delphacidae con las tribus que la integran. Se enumeran las características morfológicas de ambos sexos y un ligero análisis de su valor filogenético. También se mencionan los aspectos biológicos más relevantes, sus plantas hospederas, enemigos naturales e importancia fitosanitaria. Los estudios taxonómicos se realizaron sobre la base de materiales depositados en el Museo de La Plata (MLP), la Fundación Miguel Lillo (FML) de Tucumán, el Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia (MBA) de Buenos Aires, Argentina, el Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) de Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, el Swedish Museum of Natural History (SMNH) de Estocolmo, Suecia y The Natural History British Museum (BMNH) de Londres, Inglaterra. También se contó con ejemplares provenientes de muestreos sobre distintas especies vegetales en áreas cultivadas de la Argentina. Los estados inmaduros fueron descriptos tomando como base la descendencia de individuos mantenidos en cautividad y capturados en el campo. Los estudios poblacionales se realizaron en base a insectos obtenidos en dos sitios de muestreo de la provincia de Buenos Aires, y en base a insectos mantenidos en cautiverio. Como resultado de los estudios taxonómicos se confeccionó una clave para el reconocimiento de los 4 géneros que integran la tribu sobre la base de adultos de ambos sexos: Neomalaxa Muir 1918, Pseudomacrocorupha Muir 1930 y Saccharosydne Kirkaldy 1907 con la inclusión del nuevo género Lacertinella n. gen. Se describieron e ilustraron 2 nuevos taxa Lacertinella australis n. sp. y Saccharosydne subandina n. sp., y se redescribieron las 9 especies previamente descriptas incluyéndose información original complementaria. También se presentó una clave para la identificación de las especies del género Saccharosydne basada en caracteres exosomáticos, de coloración y genitales del macho. Para todas las especies se actualizó la información referida a plantas hospederas, distribución geográfica, enemigos naturales e importancia económica; se describió por primera vez el macho de S. rostifrons y las hembras de las especies: Pseudomacrocorupha wagnerii, Saccharosydne gracillis, Saccharosydne procerus, Saccharosydne saccharivora y Saccharosydne viridis; se amplió la lista de hospederos y la distribución geográfica de las especies de la tribu; se confeccionaron mapas de distribución geográfica y se registraron nuevos enemigos naturales. En referencia a los estadios inmaduros se incluyó información de las especies S. procerus y S. saccharivora (proveniente de estudios previos) y se describieron morfológicamente el estado de huevo y los 5 estadios ninfales de las especies L. australis y S. subandina, incluyendo ilustraciones y claves para la diferenciación intra e interespecifica. Los estudios biológicos en condiciones naturales permitieron muestrear a las poblaciones de L. australis y registrar estados/estadios de desarrollo, densidad relativa, estructura de edades, fluctuaciones poblacionales sobre plantas de cortadera (Cortaderia) a lo largo del año y enemigos naturales. En el laboratorio, bajo condiciones controladas, se obtuvo información sobre el tiempo de desarrollo por etapa del ciclo y por sexos, y se construyó una tabla de vida horizontal para estimar atributos en cada etapa del desarrollo y parámetros poblacionales. También se destacaron aquellos aspectos comportamentales de L. australis, compartidos con las dos especies previamente estudiadas, S. procerus y S. saccharivora, referidos a las conductas alimentarias y reproductivas, plantas hospederas, enemigos naturales y tipo de daño que causan.

First record of the leafhopper genus Plumosa Sohi (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae: Typhlocybinae) from China, with description of a new species

The leafhopper genus Plumosa was erected by Sohi (1977). It belongs to the tribe Erythroneurini of Typhlocybinae with Plumosa emarginata Sohi, 1977 from India as its type species. Until now, there have been no further reports on this genus. Here the genus is reported for the first time from China and a new Chinese species is described and illustrated. The type specimens are deposited to the collection of the Institute of Entomology, Guizhou University, Guiyang, Guizhou (IEGU) and Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS).

Seven new Helicopsyche (Feropsyche) Johanson, 2002 from the Neotropical region and Nearctic Mexico (Insecta: Trichoptera: Helicopsychidae)

Seven new species of Helicopsyche (Feropsyche) Johanson 2002 (Helicopsychidae) are described from Mexico (H. curvipalpia new species), Panama (H. blantoni new species, H. chiriquensis new species, H. linguata new species, and H. sanblasensis new species), and Brazil (H. paprockii new species and H. cipoensis new species) based on adult material borrowed from the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, D. C. and the Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, Illinois, USA. New records are given for H. sinuata Denning & Blickle from Mexico, and H. incisa Ross and H. woldai Johanson from Panama.

Winter Stoneflies of Illinois (Insecta: Plecoptera)

Winter stoneflies (Insecta: Plecoptera) are an aquatic group of insects whose adults emerge in IIlinois from late November to early April. Twenty-one species have been reported from Illinois. Extensive collections of winter stoneflies were made in Illinois during the 1920s and 1930s by Frison, the 1960s by Ross and “the winter stonefly club’, and the 1990s by Webb. These specimens are housed in the Insect Collection of the Illinois Natural History Survey and allowed for an evaluation of the current status of these species following a century of environmental change.Over the past century (1900-2000), the species diversity of winter stoneflies averaged 2.5 species per county with species reported from every county but 3 (Carroll, DuPage, Ford) and with 10 counties recording 5 or more species. Pope County (13 species) reported the greatest species diversity. During the recent resurvey (1976-2000), species diversity average 1.9 species per county withspecimens not collected in 11 counties, and only 3 counties (Hardin, Pope, and Saline) exhibited 5 or more species.Four species are considered extirpated from Illinois: Allocapnia illinoensis, Nemocapnia carolina, Paracapnia angulata, and Taeniopteryx parvula. Seven species were found to be common (known from more than 15 localities): Allocapnia forbesi, A. granulata, A. mystica, A. rickeri, A. vivipara, Taeniopteryx burksi, and T: nivalis. Four species are considered uncommon (known from 4—15localities): Allocapnia recta, Strophopteryx fasciata, Taeniopteryx metequi and Zealeuctra claasseni. Six species are considered rare (known from 1-3 localities): Allocapnia nivicola, A. smithi, Prostoia completa, Taeniopteryx lita, Zealeuctra fraxina, and Z. narfi. Significantly reduced patterns of distribution were noted in three species: A. granulata, A. mystica, and Strophopteryx fasciata. OnlyTaeniopteryx nivalis, previously rare, is now spreading its distribution across northern Illinois.There has been a modest decline during the past century in the diversity of stonefly species within various counties. Also, a trend was observed toward an increase in pollution-tolerant, “generalist” species with a decrease in pollution-sensitive, habitat “specialists.”