Teleogryllus (Brachyteleogryllus) occipitalis (Serville, 1838)

Sultana, Riffat, Sanam, Surriya, Kumar, Santosh, R, Sheik Mohammad Shamsudeen & Soomro, Fakhra, 2021, A review of Gryllidae (Grylloidea) with the description of one new species and four new distribution records from the Sindh Province, Pakistan, ZooKeys 1078, pp. 1-33 : 1

publication ID	https://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1078.69850
publication LSID	lsid:zoobank.org:pub:573D4067-16A2-4E20-859D-354DFAF83B4D
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/AE991E31-383D-5ED6-AF5B-D13C1662BB5F
treatment provided by	ZooKeys by Pensoft
scientific name	Teleogryllus (Brachyteleogryllus) occipitalis (Serville, 1838)
status

Treatment

Figures 1 View Figure 1 , 2 View Figure 2 , 3 View Figure 3 , 4 View Figure 4 , 5 View Figure 5 , 6 View Figure 6 , 7 View Figure 7 , 8 View Figure 8 , 9 View Figure 9 , 10 View Figure 10 , 11 View Figure 11

Material examined.

Pakistan, Sindh Prov. • 1♀; Riffat ; 5 Sep. 2019; Mithi 24.7436°N, 69.8061°E GoogleMaps .

Description.

Medium to large size. Body pale brown (Fig. 1J View Figure 1 ). Head brown to dark with horizontal band at posterior margin. Ocelli dark brown (broken off while capturing photos). Pronotum dark brown, enlarged in front, its surface is rather strongly punctuated with numerous testaceous rufous spots (Fig. 4J View Figure 4 ). Female elytra extending to the apex of abdomen; elytral veins oblique, regularly spaced. Wings well developed with geometrical designs (Fig. 9D View Figure 9 ). Legs of the same colour as body; posterior femora moderately swollen, striated on external face; posterior tibiae armed with seven spines on each margin (Fig. 6I View Figure 6 ). Abdomen pale brown, yellowish beneath. Ovipositor long, slender (Fig. 1J View Figure 1 ).

Female: LH 2.1 (mm), LP 3.85 (mm), LT 08 (mm), LF 9 (mm), TBL 20 (mm).

Ecology.

Teleogryllus is commonly known as black field cricket. Species of this genus are reported as a serious pasture pest in Australia and the warmer northern regions of New Zealand ( Banfield and Cottier 1948; Reynolds and Langton 1973; Mill 1978). They reported that each year black field crickets cause considerable losses in pasture production over the dry summer period when stock feed is short. The resulting bare areas in the pasture are then opened to weed invasion because the black field crickets consume only pasture seed.

During the present study we captured only a single female from Lolium perenne grasses, which is considered as perennial ryegrass pasture, the main feed for dairy cows in temperate regions. This study suggests that preference of crickets for perennial ryegrass may lead high risk of damage to cultivated areas of Pakistan.

Global distribution.

Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, Celebes, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, China, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Pakistan ( Cigliano et al. 2020).

Remarks.

Until now 52 species of Teleogryllus were recorded by Cigliano et al. (2020). Gorochov (1985) reviewed the Teleogryllus species from Asia and established two subgenera. He moved T. occipitalis (Serville, 1838), T. emma (Ohmachi & Matsuura, 1951 T. infernalis (Saussure, 1877), T. commodus (Walker, 1869), and T. oceanicus (Le Guillou, 1841) into the subgenus Teleogryllus Brachyteleogryllus with T. occipitalis as the type species, and he moved T. mitratus and T. derelictus into the subgenus Teleogryllus Macroteleogryllus with the first as type species. Gorochov (1988) established another subgenus, Afroteleogryllus , with T. clarus as its type species from Africa, and added a further two new species in 1990. Otte (2006) downgraded genus Cryncoides as a subgenus under Teleogryllus . The remaining species are still in the pool of the subgenus Teleogryllus Teleogryllus without having been studied again. In China, these crickets are often confused, and different species names have been used, until Ma et al. (2015) distinguished them by their genitalia. However, these changes are mainly based on morphological studies without molecular evidence.