Ezrana Distant

Jones, Joshua R. & Deitz, Lewis L., 2009, Phylogeny and systematics of the leafhopper subfamily Ledrinae (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) 2186, Zootaxa 2186 (1), pp. 1-120 : 40

Genus Ezrana Distant

(Pl. 1H, 17A–B, 18F)

Ezrana Distant, 1908: 177 .

Type species. E. pygmaea, Distant 1908: 17 , fig. 117, by original designation

Synonymy. None.

Description. Distant (1908): “Male. Head shorter than breadth between eyes; ocelli very prominent, placed on disk behind middle and slightly nearer to each other than to eyes, lateral margins straight for a short distance in front of eyes, then narrowed to apex, which is obtusely acute; pronotum non-carinate, but centrally longitudinally sulcate, lateral margins a little concavely sinuate; posterior angles subprominent, posterior margin sinuate; other characters generally as in Ledra . Legs imperfectly seen, owing to corrosion, in typical specimen, but the posterior tibiae not foliaceously dilated.”

Species. [2]: primitiva Evans ; pygmaea Distant.

Range. Australia (Queensland); India ( Bombay).

Host plants. Unknown.

Material examined. E. primitiva : 1 female, Australia, USNM, JRJ _Led1_051 .

Remarks. A unique feature of the single specimen of Ezrana examined, Ezrana primitiva Evans , is a vertically oriented keel descending approximately halfway down the face of each side of valvulae II from the first dorsal tooth (Pl. 18F_1). This feature is shared by Ledropsis froggatti Distant and Porcorhinus mastersi Goding —both also Australian species that are morphologically distinctive in their own right—and seems from the phylogenetic analysis to be a synapomorphy uniting their respective genera, but this may be an artifact of taxon sampling. At the very least it seems to be symplesiomorphic for some part of the Australian fauna. From the phylogenetic analysis it seems that the species group including E. primitiva , L. froggatti and P. mastersi ( Figs. 1–3 ) is part of a larger, distinct Australian clade recently separated from the Indomalayan fauna (see “Phylogenetic results and discussion” above). It would be interesting to see if the type species, E. pygmaea (location of type specimen unknown) has the keel on valvulae II.

The available specimen of E. primitiva , a female, appears to violate at least two defining features for Ezrana given by Distant (1908: 177), the “posterior tibia not foliaceously dilated” and the “pronotum noncarinate.” E. primitiva , which is large and distinctive in these respects, probably belongs in its own genus.

L. froggatti (and Ledropsis crocina Distant , which was only briefly examined and not included in analysis) lacks a pronotal crest and foliaceous tibia, and in this regard accords with Distant’s (1908) description for Ezrana . However, L. froggatti lacks prominent ocelli and a central longitudinal sulcus on the pronotum, and its head in both the male and female is longer than the breadth between the eyes, violating these characters for Ezrana .

It is unclear at this point whether L. froggatti (and L. crocina ) should be placed within Ezrana or accorded its own genus. Decisions involving the classification of L. froggatti , Ezrana , E. primitiva , and the other Australian species can best be made by a species-level revision of the Australian fauna, and by comparing types of each of these species with newly collected material that includes males and females.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Phylogram of relationships generated from cladistic analysis of entire dataset: {= [Ledrinae sensu Oman et al. (1990) dataset] + [dataset of non-ledrine taxa included to provide resolution to ingroup taxa anticipated to ultimately place outside of Ledrinae (marked in italic bold with an asterisk*)]}. Analysis in PAUP* was rooted to Bathysmatophorus shabliovskii, and resulted in a single most parsimonious tree with a cost of 1719 steps. Bremer support values are given above the branch to which they correspond. Squares, circles and triangles indicate tribal placements of included genera in Oman et al. (1990). The boundary of Ledrinae, as it is here recognized, is marked with a black star.

FIGURE 2. Phylogram of relationships generated from cladistic analysis of pruned dataset, including only species herein recognized to belong to the subfamily Ledrinae. Analysis in PAUP* was again rooted to B. shabliovskii; Aphrodes was included as putative sister group to the Ledrinae. This second analysis resulted in a single most parsimonious tree with a cost of 1185 steps. Bremer support values are given above the branch to which they correspond; the black star marks the phylogenetic boundary of Ledrinae. Ingroup resolution is topologically identical to that in Fig. 1, but branch lengths and Bremer supports vary.

FIGURE 3. Phylogram of summarized relationships among Ledrinae genera generated from a reduced dataset including single exemplars of each available genus. If available, the type species was chosen (marked with an asterisk*). Additional exemplars were included in cases where polyphyly among species was demonstrated in previous analyses, and where a male and a female of different species in the genus were needed to provided all of the pertinent characters (i. e., genitalia). Analysis (in PAUP*, rooted to B. shabliovskii, with Aphrodes included as putative sister group to the Ledrinae) resulted in five equally parsimonious trees (cost 933). The selected topology differs slightly from Fig. 2 in the placement of E. planata as sister to T. antica, in Titiella and Hangklipia not being placed as sister taxa, and in Jukaruka being placed with Platyledra instead of Ledropsella. Numbers at internodes correspond to a list of apomorphies generated from this analysis (see Table 1). Higher taxa within Ledrinae recognized herein, including new tribes (with their distributions), and informal genus and species groups, are indicated by symbols. The inclusion of Dusuna within the Petalocephala genus group is at present uncertain, as indicated by the question marks above the open triangles.