Tmethis cisti (Fabricius, 1787)

Usmani, Mohammad Kamil, 2007, Studies on some Libyan species of Pamphagidae (Orthoptera: Acridoidea), Zootaxa 1625, pp. 47-60 : 56

Tmethis cisti (Fabricius, 1787)

Gryllus cisti Fabricius, 1787 , Mant. Insect, 1:237..

Acridium hispidulum Palisot de Beauvois, 1805, Inst. Afr. Amer. 200 (Synonymy quoted by Uvarov, 1943) Gryllus locusta versicolor Stoll, 1813 , Repres. Spectres. Sant.' etc., 34 (Synonymy quoted by Uvarov, 1943) Tmethis olivieri Kirby, 1910 , Syn . Cat. Orth., 3: 288 (Synonymy quoted by Uvarov, 1943)

Uvarov (1943) revised the genus Tmethis Fieber and its species. He recorded seven subspecies of T. cisti from North Africa with their differentiating characters. Of these, four subspecies T. c. cisti (Fabricius, 1787) ; T. c. barcaeus Salfi, 1926; T. c. clavelli (Lucas, 1850) and T. c. harterti Uvarov, 1923 have been reported from Cyrenaica and Tripolitania ( Libya) by Salfi (1925), Jannone (1938) and Uvarov (1943). A new subspecies T. c. khaledi subsp. n. was described by Ajaili & Usmani (1999) from Fezzan ( Libya). At present, the species is known to contain five subspecies from Libya including one new subspecies.

The species with a new subspecies T. c. khaledi was recorded for the first time from Fezzan ( Libya) by the authors in 1999.