Burnilia Muir & Giffard, 1924

Asche, Manfred, Hayashi, Masami & Fujinuma, Satoshi, 2016, Enigmatic distribution: first record of a hitherto New World planthopper taxon from Japan (Hemiptera, Fulgoroidea, Delphacidae, Plesiodelphacinae), Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift 63 (1), pp. 75-88 : 75-76

Taxon classification Animalia Hemiptera Delphacidae

Burnilia Muir & Giffard, 1924

Proterosydne : Crawford 1914: 570, nec Kirkaldy 1907: 130.

Burnilia Muir & Giffard, 1924: 7. Type species: Delphax pictifrons Stål, 1864, [Mexico], by original designation.

Diagnosis

(modified from Asche 1985a, b). As a plesiodelphacine genus, Burnilia is recognizable by the following combination of characters: head with vertex well projected in front of compound eyes, carination weakly developed or partly entirely missing; frons elongate and usually widest at frontoclypeal suture; antennal joints subcylindrical with elongate pedicel; head usually with boldly coloured contrasting blackish marks, either as transverse frontal stripe(s), or as longitudinal frontal stripe enclosing median carina; sides of head in front and/or above compound eyes partly with extended black patches; pronotum anterolaterally with a dark mark, in some species bearing waxy exudations; post-tibial spur “alohine”, i.e., elliptical in cross-section bearing well separated cone-shaped teeth at the posterior margin; hind wings with anastomosis of M and Cu; drumming organ sexually dimorphic, males with elongate and erect apodemes of the second abdominal sternite and development of a "central plate" in the second abdominal tergite; diaphragm of male genital segment dorsally with conspicuous transverse spatula-shaped or subtriangular projections directed cephalad (probably as ventrocaudal support of the aedeagus); aedeagal complex devoid of a free suspensorium, dorsal base of phallotheca directly connected with ventral base of anal segment; aedeagus tubular, elongate, curved dorsally, central tube strongly sclerotized, phallotheca membranous, in most species subapically a single spinose or flag-like process; females ditrysic, i.e., full separation of copulation and oviposition duct; entry to prevaginal chamber mostly sclerotized, often forming a funnel-shaped guiding aid for the aedeagus.

Asche (1985a, b) considered the shape and carination of the vertex as well as the unique configuration of the male genitalia associated with the ditrysic female genitalia (diaphragm of the genital segment with a spatula-like transverse plate directed interiorly, supposedly for guiding the aedeagus into the female copulatory duct) as autapomorphic for Burnilia . The newly discovered species from Japan displays these autapomorphies, and can therefore be regarded as a congener.

We refrain from the establishment of a separate subgenus for the Japanese species based on certain morphological differences from Neotropical Burnilia (see below) before a phylogenetic analysis of this taxon is available.

Distribution.

Neotropical Region (6 species, one of which two subspecies), South East Palaearctic Region: Japan (one species described below, new record).