Ochterus, Latreille, 1807

Polhemus, Dan A. & Polhemus, John T., 2012, Guide To The Aquatic Heteroptera Of Singapore And Peninsular Malaysia. Ix. Infraorder Nepomorpha, Families Ochteridae And Gelastocoridae, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 60 (2), pp. 343-359 : 344

Genus OCHTERUS Latreille

Discussion. — Ochterus species form two distinct ecological groups, those inhabiting horizontal littoral substrates of mud and sand along lowland lakes and rivers, and those occurring on vertical seeping rheocrenes and wet rocks in the highlands. The latter guild has radiated extensively in the mountains of New Guinea ( Baehr, 1990b) and to a lesser extent in the Philippines ( Gapud, 1981, 1995, 2003; Gapud & San Valentin, 1977), Sulawesi (Nieser & Chen, 1992, 1999), and the Greater Sunda Islands ( Jaczewski, 1935; Baehr, 1990a; Nieser & Chen, 1992; Zettel & Lane, 2010); as shown below, certain continental Asian species also share this ecology. With the exception of widespread species such as O. marginatus , which occurs along the margins of ponds and rivers, ochterids tend to be poorly represented in collections, being active, agile insects which fly readily when disturbed and are challenging to capture. This, combined with their utilisation of frequently undersampled rheocrene habitats, means that they may often be overlooked by general collectors ( Jaczewski, 1935). The species inhabiting rheocrenes are often best collected by applying a light pyrethrin fog and then capturing the insects thus slowed in their movements.

As currently interpreted, four species of Ochteridae occur in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia, three of which are newly described below. The key also includes two additional widespread species known from the Greater Sunda Islands that could also conceivably occur in the region under study (see Appendix 1 for an updated regional checklist of Ochterus species occurring in Southeast Asia and the Malay Archipelago).