Aleurodicus dispersus Russell

John H. Martin, 2004, Whiteflies of Belize (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae). Part 1 — introduction and account of the subfamily Aleurodicinae Quaintance & Baker, Zootaxa 681, pp. 1-86 : 21

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.158856

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5659530

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/FD3C627A-FFB6-FF96-FF40-FC9BFEC3F890

treatment provided by

Plazi

scientific name

Aleurodicus dispersus Russell
status

 

Aleurodicus dispersus Russell View in CoL

( Figs 3, 63, 123)

Aleurodicus dispersus Russell, 1965: 49 View in CoL –54. Holotype, Florida [paratypes examined].

DISTRIBUTION. Neotropical Region — widely distributed; Nearctic Region — Florida; Palaearctic Region — Canary Islands, Madeira; Ethiopian Region — Cameroun, Congo, Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Sao Tomé, Togo; Malagasian Region — Mauritius; Oriental Region — India, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand; Austro­oriental and Pacific Regions — widely distributed; Australia — northern Queensland.

COMMENTS. A. dispersus is one of only two known Aleurodicus species that possess only 4 pairs of abdominal compound pores, in total, on the puparium. A third member of the same small assemblage ( A. flavus Hempel ) has additionally just one pair of tiny compound pores, situated on abdominal segment VII, otherwise strongly resembling A. dispersus .

A. dispersus View in CoL was particularly unusual in remaining undescribed for many years, despite the accumulation of numerous samples in the USNM collection, most of them interceptions at United States port quarantine facilities; yet it is now the best­known of all Aleurodicus View in CoL species. It is probable that A. dispersus View in CoL (the so­called “spiralling whitefly”) is native to the Caribbean and northern South America. Although many of the paratypes are from these native areas, Russell chose a sample from Florida from which to select the holotype. This curious technicality qualifies A.dispersus View in CoL as one of several neotropical whiteflies to have been described from material sampled in an area of probable introduction. This choice of holotype may have been the result of most other specimens, then available to Russell, being isolated quarantine interceptions with imprecise originating locality data. Since its description, the spiralling whitefly has become almost pan­tropical in its distribution, its rapid radiation having begun in the 1980s ( Martin & Lucas, 1984; Martin 1990).

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Insecta

Order

Hemiptera

Family

Aleyrodidae

Genus

Aleurodicus

Loc

Aleurodicus dispersus Russell

John H. Martin 2004
2004
Loc

Aleurodicus dispersus

Russell 1965: 49
1965
GBIF Dataset (for parent article) Darwin Core Archive (for parent article) View in SIBiLS Plain XML RDF