Viscainopelmatus, Tinkham, 1970

Weissman, David B., Vandergast, Amy G., Song, Hojun, Shin, Seunggwan, Mckenna, Duane D. & Ueshima, Norihiro, 2021, Generic relationships of New World Jerusalem crickets (Orthoptera: Stenopelmatoidea: Stenopelmatinae), including all known species of Stenopelmatus, Zootaxa 4917 (1), pp. 1-122 : 20

Viscainopelmatus junior synonym of Ammopelmatus.

On the basis of our analyses of DNA sequence data ( Vandergast et al. 2017), we declare Viscainopelmatus Tinkham a junior synonym of Ammopelmatus . Tinkham (1970) described the morphologically unique V. davewerneri from desert sands about half the distance down the Baja California Peninsula. Given its characteristic behavior and karyotype, and its recovery within the Ammopelmatus Clade, we treat it as an unusually adapted species of Ammopelmatus whose relationships with other species of Ammopelmatus would be obscured if retained as a monotypic genus. Also, keeping Viscainopelmatus as a monotypic genus would make Ammopelmatus paraphyletic, which is another reason for this synonymy.

Correlated with this last action, Ammopelmatus will now contain all described taxa from the United States since the type species, A. kelsoensis , is recovered within the Ammopelmatus Clade and is the first genus name available for the rest of those species in that Clade. Besides forming 2 cohesive and distinct genetic clades, there are a number of morphological, ecological, karyotypic, and behavioral characters that also justify separating Stenopelmatus from Ammopelmatus . No one character is diagnostic, except for those species in Stenopelmatus that jump or hop, but a constellation of characters does exist, associated with each genus, which we now discuss.