Ploiaria SCOPOLI, 1786

Rédei, D., 2007, New And Little-Known Thread-Legged Assassin Bugs From Australia And New Guinea (Heteroptera: Reduviidae: Emesinae), Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 53 (4), pp. 363-379 : 365

Ploiaria SCOPOLI, 1786

Ploiaria SCOPOLI, 1786: 60 . Type species by monotypy: Ploiaria domestica SCOPOLI, 1786 .

For the numerous synonyms of the genus see WYGODZINSKY (1966: 158), MALDONADO CAPRILES (1990: 108), PUTSHKOV and PUTSHKOV (1996: 158) and CASSIS and GROSS (1995: 292).

Ploiaria is one of the four cosmopolitan genera of thread-legged assassin bugs or Emesinae with native species in all zoogeographical regions. WYGODZINSKY (1966) keyed and surveyed 99 species described before 1965 and described seven new species. In the next decades, a few new species have been described. MALDONADO CAPRILES (1990) lists 122 valid species in his World catalogue. Since then, six new species were described, therefore, the current species number of the genus attains to 128.

WYGODZINSKY (1956) revised the Australian fauna of Ploiaria and recognized ten species, seven of which he described as new. Since then, no further species have been described or reported from the continent ( CASSIS & GROSS 1995). An additional twelve species occur in the adjacent areas usually considered to belong to the Australian Region (New Guinea, New Zealand and the oceanic islands of the eastern Pacific to the Philippines).

A new species from SE Australia as well as the hitherto unknown apterous female of the New Guinea species P. biroi WYGODZINSKY, 1966 are described below.