Mecopoda niponensis (Haan, 1843)

The species can morphologically be separated from all other congeneric species by its short and wide tegmina (Fig. 5 A; see measurements in Liu Cx et al. 2020). Also its trilling calling song, studied in China (Liu YF et al. 2019; Liu Cx et al. 2020), Japan (Ichikawa et al. 2006; Yamamoto 2006) and Korea (Kim 2009), shows a characteristic amplitude modulation (see Fig. 6–7), clearly different from other Mecopoda species.

However, we have a specimen from Vietnam at hand in which morphology and song pattern disagree. The trilling song of this animal shows the typical niponensis pattern, but it has unusually long and narrow tegmina. With a length/width ratio of 3.43 it is just outside the range (2.19–3.36) given by Liu Cx et al. (2020) for niponensis . More important, the tegmen length (55 mm) is far outside the range of niponensis (34–49 mm, Liu Cx et al. 2020; 40–43 mm in Korea, Storozhenko et al. 2015). Since it has additional song components not known from niponensis, and was found outside the known range of the species, we consider it as member of a new subspecies (see below).