Porophoroptera Carvalho and Gross

Menard, Katrina L. & Schuh, Randall T., 2011, Revision Of Leucophoropterini: Diagnoses, Key To Genera, Redescription Of The Australian Fauna, And Descriptions Of New Indo-Pacific Genera And Species (Insecta: Hemiptera: Miridae), Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (361), pp. 1-159 : 156

Porophoroptera Carvalho and Gross

Porophoroptera Carvalho and Gross, 1982: 51 (n. gen., descr., disc.).

DISCUSSION: The monotypic genus Porophoroptera ( P. elegans Carvalho and Gross , type species) was described from Australia by Carvalho and Gross (1982), and placed in the Leucophoroptera Group ( Leucophoropterini ) based on it being putatively ant mimetic. The overall habitus and coloration of Porophoroptera are similar to many of the genera included in Leucophoropterini , but there are several unique abdominal and genitalic features that suggest that it does not belong to the tribe. First, the endosoma is flat and box shaped ( Carvalho and Gross, 1982: fig. 82) rather than elongate or tubular. Second, the pygophore is relatively large compared with those in the Leucophoropterini , at least M the total length of the abdomen. For these reasons it is unlikely that Porophoroptera belongs to the Leucophoropterini and it is therefore tentatively placed in the Phylini . We would also note that in Porophoroptera both males and females have small, white sclerotized structures extending dorsally from the dorsolateral margins of the second abdominal sternites, which have thus far not been found in any other Miridae species.