Cryphocricos barozzii Signoret, 1850

Sites, Robert W., 2021, A review of Cryphocricos Signoret, 1850 (Naucoridae: Cryphocricinae) with descriptions of three new species, Zootaxa 4958 (1), pp. 72-94 : 74-75

Cryphocricos barozzii Signoret

( Figs 1–4 )

Cryphocricos barozzii Signoret 1850 : Rev. Mag. Zool. Appl. 2:291.

Naucoris barozzii: Walker 1873 , Cat. Hemip. Heterop. Coll. British Mus. 8:185.

Cryptocricus barozzii: Montandon 1897 , Verh. Zool.-Bot. Ges. Wien 2:7 (redescription and misspelling).

Cryphocricos barozzi: Kirkaldy 1906 , Trans. Amer. Entomol. Soc. 32:185 (misspelling).

Type repository: Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (Vienna, Austria) .

Type locality: The locality was given only as Brazil, with no finer details. Montandon (1911) later mistakenly reported the type locality to be “ Chili ” and by Kirkaldy & Torre Bueno (1909) as both Brazil and Chile.

Discussion: The holotype is a male and encrusted with what appear to be mineral deposits ( Fig. 1 ). Parsons & Hewson (1974) used C. barozzii and C. hungerfordi to study the morphology of the cuticle showing its plastron retention capability. Further, Parsons (1966) provided a comparative analysis of the cephalic anatomy among five genera of Naucoridae and one of Aphelocheiridae . Later, Parsons (1974) studied the morphology of the pterothoracic intersegmental region including that of C. barozzii . Lopez Ruf et al. (2000) described the ventilatory structures of C. barozzii and compared them to those of Aphelocheirus aestivalis (Fabricius, 1794) . They suggested the two genera are more closely related than previously thought because the specialized plastron system could not have evolved convergently. However, a molecular phylogeny of Cryphocricinae (Reynoso-Velasco & Sites, in prep.) and upcoming phylogeny of the entire family by RWS indicate the opposite, that Aphelocheiridae and Cryphocricos (and most likely the Papuan genus Idiocarus ) evolved plastron systems convergently. Idiocarus has not been shown to have plastral respiration, although it lives in fast, highly oxygenated streams and has alary dimorphism with the brachypterous form predominant.

In a treatment of species of Cryphocricos known or thought to occur in Argentina, Lopez Ruf (1991) provided a detailed diagnosis for C. barozzii and descriptions of nymphal instars 1–3 and 5 and later revised her description of instar 3 ( Lopez Ruf 1996). Because she could not locate the type, Lopez Ruf (1991) based her identification on comparison of the curvature of the lateral margins of her specimens with that in a drawing by Signoret (1850). I have not seen a drawing in the original description by Signoret (1850), but if it exists, his rendering of the lateral margin cannot be considered a reliable diagnostic characteristic by which to distinguish C. barozzii from all congeners; thus, the descriptive information in this paper should be considered suspect unless validated by the examination of vouchers.

Diagnosis: The original description ( Signoret 1850) is translated to English as follows: Generally brown. Below a little lighter. Yellowish head and beak, as well as antennae and legs. Granular head and prothorax, very flat, and lateral margins of the latter crenulate. Elytra flattened, finely granulate, and extending over the body below.Anterior femora granular and browner than the insect; the posterior femora yellowish, as well as the tibia. Length 0, 011; width 1, 006. In a redescription, the size was reported as 10.2 mm length and 5 mm width ( Montandon 1897).

In a comparison with macropterous C. breddini, Montandon (1911) provided features to distinguish it from brachypterous C. barozzii ; however, most of these features are related to differences between wing morphs and are not necessarily interspecific differences. At the time, these were the only two species described; thus, because these features are fairly ubiquitous they are of little use to distinguish among the species currently described. He also reported both species to be of nearly identical size and color.

After examining thousands of specimens of the genus, I have discovered a feature apparently unique to C. barozzii . The dark tuberculation of the abdominal terga in brachypterous specimens tends to be sparse and limited to the anterior terga ( Figs. 2–3 ). More specifically, the tubercles are only on terga III and IV and sometimes a few appear in the paramedian areas of tergum V (anteriorly on fused tergum V of males). On some specimens, the tubercles appear only on the median halves of terga III and IV, whereas on others the tubercles are distributed further laterally. The abdominal tubercle condition of the holotype was confirmed by Herbert Zettel (pers. comm.). The restriction of the abdominal tubercles anteriorly is distinct and appears to be diagnostic for this species, and is clearly different than the condition of other species in which the abdomen is usually either devoid of, or covered with, tubercles. The female subgenital plate exhibits a moderate amount of variation in the shape of the posterior margin; the rounded posterolateral lobes are sometimes well-developed and an incipient medial lobe also can be present ( Fig. 4 ). Many museum collections hold Fritz Plaumann specimens from Nova Teutonia, Brazil, and I have a series from Rosario River in Rio Grande do Sul; these are all C. barozzii . Based on the newly discovered abdominal tubercle feature, the distribution of C. barozzii includes Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul in the extreme south of Brazil.

Figures

FIGURES 1–4. Cryphocricos barozzii (1) holotype, (2) brachypterous female from Rosario River, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, (3) abdominal terga showing dark tubercles near middle of III–V, (4) subgenital plate of two specimens from Nova Teutonia, Brazil showing intrapopulational variation in shape of posterior margin. Figure 1 courtesy of NHMW Hemiptera Image Collection / Harald Bruckner and Herbert Zettel.