Biodiversity of the scentless plant bugs (Hemiptera: Rhopalidae) in southern South America

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a comprehensive faunal survey of the Rhopalidae from southern South America with emphasis on the fauna of Argentina, based on published and unpublished data. The biodiversity from Argentina comprises 38 recorded species from six genera: Arhyssus Stål 1870 (one species), Liorhyssus Stål 1870 (two species), Niesthrea Spinola 1837 (five species), Xenogenus Berg 1883 (two species), Harmostes Burmeister 1835 (20 species), and Jadera Stål 1862 (eight species). We established accurate distributions for most of the species and report new distributional information for 27 of them. Most of these records are from Argentinean provinces, but we also report five new country records: three from Argentina – Harmostes (Harmostes) splendens Harris 1944, H. (Neoharmostes) bergi Göllner-Scheiding 1998 and Arhyssus tricostatus (Spinola 1852); one from Brazil – Xenogenus picturatum Berg 1883; and one from Paraguay – Harmostes (Harmostes) gravidator (Fabricius 1794).

KEYWORDS:

• Arhyssus
• Harmostes
• Liorhyssus
• Niesthrea
• Xenogenus
• Jadera

Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to Thomas J. Henry for allowing us to examine the collection of rhopalids in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), under an external grant to the first author to work at the entomological collection of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.