Mecidea Dallas, 1851

Rider, David A. & Swanson, Daniel R., 2021, A distributional synopsis of the Pentatomidae (Heteroptera) north of Mexico, including new state and provincial records, Zootaxa 5015 (1), pp. 1-69 : 32

Mecidea Dallas, 1851

The genus Mecidea presently contains 16 species with some members occurring in both the Old and New Worlds. They are quite distinctive in that they are elongate, slender, pale yellowish species with stridulatory areas on each side of the ventral surface of the abdomen. Sailer (1952) reviewed the genus.

In most early works, it was believed that a single species, Mecidea longula Stål occurred in the United States. Ruckes (1946b) recognized that there were actually two species in North America; he named a new species Mecidea minor , but he still referred to the first species as Mecidea longula . Sailer (1952), in his revision of the genus, determined that Mecidea longula was confined to the West Indies Islands (although it has now been found in southern Florida), and that the first known species in the U.S. was actually another undescribed species, which he described as Mecidea major . So, it is difficult to determine which early records of Mecidea longula from the U.S. pertain to Mecidea major and which ones pertain to Mecidea minor . Eger & Dobbs (2010) provided a key (and illustrations) for identifying the three species occurring in North America.