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Family Fulgoridae Latreille, 1807
Subfamily Poiocerinae Haupt, 1929
Tribe Poiocerini Haupt, 1929
Genus Scaralina Yanega, 2024.
Type species (in original combination): Calyptoproctus marmoratus Spinola, 1839.
Synonyms
None.
Distribution
Southern United States and Central America
Recognized species
Scaralina aethrinsula Yanega & Van Dam, 2024 – USA (AZ, NM, UT, ID), Mexico (Chihuahua)
Scaralina chapina Goemans & Yanega, 2024 – Guatemala, Honduras
Scaralina cristata Yanega & Van Dam, 2024 – USA (AZ, NM); Mexico (Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora)
Scaralina durango Yanega, 2024 – Mexico (Durango)
Scaralina gigantea Yanega, 2024 – Mexico (Durango, Chihuahua)
Scaralina hawksi Yanega, 2024 – Mexico (Durango)
Scaralina marmorata (Spinola, 1839) – USA (FL, GA, AR, LA, NC, SC, TX, VA)
= Crepusia glauca Metcalf, 1923: 173.
= Alphina glauca (Metcalf, 1923); comb. by Metcalf 1938: 348-349.
= Calyptoproctus marmoratus Spinola, 1839: 271
Scaralina metcalfi Yanega & Van Dam, 2024 – USA (AZ); Mexico: Chihuahua
Scaralina monzoni Goemans & Yanega, 2024 – Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico (Chiapas, Sinaloa, Veracruz), Nicaragua, Panama
Scaralina obfusca Yanega, 2024 – Mexico (Chihuahua)
Scaralina obrienae Yanega & Van Dam, 2024 – Guatemala, Mexico (Aguascalientes, Chiapas, Guerrero, Hidalgo, México, Michoacán)
Scaralina orientalis Yanega, 2024 – Mexico (San Luis Potosí, Nuevo León, Puebla, Tamaulipas)
Scaralina rileyi Yanega, 2024 – USA (TX)
Scaralina sullivani Yanega, 2024 – Mexico (Veracruz)
Scaralina veracruzensis Yanega & Van Dam, 2024 – Mexico (Veracruz)
Economic Importance
Limited.
Plant Associations
Associated with oaks (Quercus sp.)
plant names from USDA PLANTS or Tropicos.
Recognition
Abridged from Yanega et al. (2024)
Species are most similar to those of Scaralis (and Jamaicastes), especially in the reduced femoral ridges and mesocoxal spines, as well as details of the head and thorax, such as the pattern of notal carinae, the long rostrum, and the broad lateral lobes of the lower frons. There are, however, several characters that together distinguish all members of Scaralina from the type species of Scaralis (S. picta) and others we have examined. Most reliable among these features in Scaralina are the following: the second antennomere (small and globose in Scaralina versus large and asymmetrically ovoid, larger than the antennal socket in Scaralis); the more elongate clypeus (usually roughly twice as long as wide, and reaching the apex of the forecoxae); the forewings without an arcuate impressed nodal line at the base of the apical hyaline portion (well-defined in Scaralis); the distal forewing membrane patterned with irregular maculations and variable venule coloration (membrane hyaline, evenly-tinted, or gradually shading, with venules uniform or very gradually shading in almost all Scaralis); a projecting, abbreviated, and concave trapezoidal versteifung with a strongly angulate proximal margin (in Scaralis the “versteifung” is lower and sometimes elongated, weakly concave, and more rounded at the proximal end); the prominent leg markings (contrasting transverse bands on fore- and mid-femora and tibiae); the numerous black granular sublateral pits on the abdominal terga (these pits concolorous with the surrounding cuticle in Scaralis, and fewer in number); the male gonostyli more visibly enclosing the aedeagal apex, with a setose bulge at the base of an incurved dorsal surface (in Scaralis only the extreme apex of the aedeagal complex is sometimes enclosed dorsally, and the setose bulge is very small and approximates the inner margin of the gonostyle); the fine but very readily visible pubescence on the dorsal thorax, in particular (the dorsal thorax is usually bare in Scaralis, as are the wing veins, or at most with barely visible short, fine setae). Several more variable or occasionally unreliable features can be added to this list, for distinguishing Scaralina from Scaralis: the sub-ocular lobes (nearly absent in most Scaralina, versus distinct and rounded or subacute in most Scaralis); the well-defined and contiguous carinae of the mesonotum in Scaralis (no species of Scaralina has all of these carinae well-defined for their entire length; one or more are reduced to low ridges or entirely obsolescent, at least in part); the reduced female supra-anal plate in Scaralina (absent or only partially concealing the anal tube versus completely covering it; in genera such as Scaralis this is typically at least three times the length of any of the preceding tergites); the deep punctures and/or wrinkles in the dorsal and lateral faces of the pronotum in Scaralis; the red or orange coloration of the hindwing bases (only two Scaralina have blue coloration basally, while Scaralis typically do); the greatly reduced wax production in Scaralina (in Scaralis, the face and pleura often have large areas bearing wax pollinosity, and the spiracles are often entirely occluded by wax, plus a distinct mass of wax on either side of the terminalia in females); the hyaline or weakly infumate anal region of the hind wing (strongly infumated with pale venation in Scaralis); the broadly rounded apical concavity of the male anal tube (generally deeply notched in Scaralis). Despite some variability, the combined list of such features that differ between the two groups is enough, we believe, to justify a generic-level separation, and we further believe this group as defined here is likely to be monophyletic; nonetheless, it would not be surprising to discover (e.g., if and when a thorough molecular phylogenetic analysis with all of the South American species is performed) that Scaralina as here defined render Scaralis paraphyletic, or the converse, in which case the two groups may need to be relegated to subgenera within a more inclusive genus Scaralis. Scaralina chapina and S. monzoni, in particular, show more intermediate features than any of the other taxa (e.g., these species have the clypeus only slightly longer than broad, have blue hindwing bases, with the forewing basal markings extending to the point where RP deviates from ScP+RA, and lacking translucent basal areas in the forewings; chapina also has the male gonostylar hooks short and thickened as in Scaralis), and were it not for these two species, the separation of the two genera would be far more definitive.
Figures 13–20 (from Yanega et al. 2024). Habitus photos of Scaralina species. (13) S. aethrinsula (male); (14) S. chapina (male); (15) S. cristata (male); (16) S. marmorata (female); (17) S. durango (type female); (18) S. gigantea (type female); (19) S. hawksi (female, crushed somewhat); (20) S. metcalfi (male).
Online resources
BugGuide.
iNaturalist.
Wikipedia.
FLOW.
EOL.
GBIF.
BOLD.
GenBank.
3i (World Auchenorrhyncha Database).
Discover Life.
Extension Entomology in El Paso County. (Salvador Vitanza)
Collecting
Some species come to lights
Molecular resources
Genbank has several genes for Alphina glauca; Barcode of life has data for A. glauca and a second taxon (which appears to be a manuscript name).
Selected references
Yanega, D., GOEMANS, G., DAM, M., Gómez-Marco, F., & HODDLE, M. 2024. Description of a new genus of North and Central American planthoppers (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae) with fourteen new species. Zootaxa, 5443, 1–53. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5443.1.1
