Leptaspis, Hardy, Nate B. & Williams, Douglas J., 2018

Hardy, Nate B. & Williams, Douglas J., 2018, Doubling the known endemic species diversity of New Caledonian armored scale insects (Hemiptera, Diaspididae), ZooKeys 782, pp. 11-47 : 11

Leptaspis gen. n.

Type species.

Leptaspis pege sp. n. by monotypy and original designation.

Diagnosis.

A pupillarial genus. Adult female with body outline elongate, nearly four times as long as wide. Pygidium without lobes, plates or macroducts. Perivulvar and perispiracular pores absent. Gland tubercles in marginal series. Eye a subcircular disk on dorsal submargin lateral of antenna. Antenna with one long fleshy seta. Second-instar female with three pairs of pygidial lobes, fimbriate plates, and slender one-barred macroducts. Anus at anterior end of medial furrow delimited by sclerotic carinae.

Comments.

As has been done many times before, we erect a new monotypic genus for a pupillarial species with no obvious taxonomic affinity. In this case, the adult female has the unusual combination of gland tubercles and anterior spiracles without pores. Pupillarial life histories have evolved repeatedly in armored scale insects ( Andersen et al. 2010) and have spurred extensively parallel evolution of a variety of morphological reductions. Some features of the new genus are similar to those of Neoleucaspis Green described from India, but the latter genus possesses a series of lobe-like structures around the pygidial margin and lacks gland tubercles. Moreover, the lobes of the second-instar of Neoleucaspis are pointed whereas the lobes of the new genus are rounded. Because the genus is monotypic, the description of the type species also describes the genus.