Scaria Bolivar , 1887

Kasalo, Niko, Deranja, Maks, Adzic, Karmela, Sindaco, Roberto & Skejo, Josip, 2021, Discovering insect species based on photographs only: The case of a nameless species of the genus Scaria (Orthoptera: Tetrigidae), Journal of Orthoptera Research 30 (2), pp. 173-184 : 173

Genus Scaria Bolivar, 1887

Type species. -

Scaria hamata (De Geer, 1773).

Composition and distribution. -

With this unnamed species, genus Scaria currently includes 13 species. All the species inhabit South America, with only one species ( S. fasciata ) reaching central America (e.g., Panama and Nicaragua) ( Hancock 1907, Cadena-Castañeda et al. 2019). The genus is currently divided into four species groups (see Table 1 ). Members of Scaria inhabit the Amazon rainforest and its vicinity.

Generic identification of the unnamed species. -

Grant (1956) listed three characters as differentiable between Scaria and newly established Rehnidium Grant, 1956: 1) morphology of female subgenital plate, 2) smaller body size of Rehnidium members, and 3) frontal costa more protrusive in Rehnidium than in Scaria . Cadena-Castañeda et al. (2019) added a few more characters, among them 4) Scaria is generally slenderer than Rehnidium ; 5) tegmina of Scaria members are black, while they are brown in all other genera of Batrachideinae ; and 6) hind femora sulcated in Scaria , unlike carinated in Rehnidium . We identify this species as Scaria Bolivar, 1887 because it shows the following characters typical of the genus: 1) median carina of the pronotum projected above the head anteriorly in the form of a well-developed spine (similar to Rehnidium Grant, 1956 in which the spine is less pronounced); 2) slender (slim) and elongated body (differing it from robust members of the genus Rehnidium Grant, 1956); 3) black basal color of tegmina (not brown as in Rehnidium ); and 4) flat pronotum (not roof-like as in Rehnidium ).

The two individuals of the newly reported species are macropterous and macropronotal, pronotum being longer than hind femora. Characters that are present in all Scaria species known so far, but at first seem to be absent in the unnamed one, are 1) absence of clearly visible pale colored spot at posterior part of tegmen and 2) a lack of dark lateral stripe on the pronotum. The tegminal spot might be present in the reported specimens, but it is simply covered by a wide yellow-colored stripe that lies in the middle part of tegmen. This is the first Scaria species with medial stripe on tegmina (for comparison, S. laeta Günther, 1940 has the yellow stripe in the ventral portion of the tegmen, while S. jonasi Cadena-Castañeda et al. 2019 has it on the dorsal portion of tegmina). Arguments for not identifying the species as Rehnidium are 1) members of Rehnidium always have a brown base color of tegmina and 2) members of the genus Rehnidium have short and wide ovipositor valves ( Cadena-Castañeda and Cardona 2015, Cadena-Castañeda et al. 2019).