Nannocoris tuberculiferus Reuter, 1891

Weirauch, Christiane, Hoey-Chamberlain, Rochelle & Knyshov, Alexander, 2018, Synopsis of Schizopteridae (Hemiptera, Heteroptera, Dipsocoromorpha) from the United States, with description of seven new species from the US and Mexico, ZooKeys 796, pp. 49-82 : 49

Nannocoris tuberculiferus Reuter, 1891

Notes.

Nomenclature. Reuter (1891) described the subgenus Schizoptera (Nannocoris) to accommodate two new species with distinctly elongated heads, Schizoptera (Nannocoris) nebulifera Reuter, 1891 and Schizoptera (Nannocoris) tuberculifera Reuter, 1891. Whereas Schizoptera is feminine, Nannocoris is masculine, because “coris” is Greek for “bug” and a noun with masculine gender. When McAtee and Malloch (1925) elevated Nannocoris to genus level, they failed to adjust the gender of previously described species from feminine to masculine and also treated their newly described species as feminine. Nevertheless, subsequent authors continued to treat Nannocoris as feminine. Nannocoris arenaria Blatchley, 1926 was corrected to Nannocoris arenarius Blatchley, 1926 by Henry (1988) without comment. We here adjust the genders to masculine for all remaining names that were originally treated as feminine and are not patronyms: N. nebuliferus Reuter, 1891; N. tuberculiferus Reuter, 1891; N. capitatus (Uhler, 1894); N. nasus McAtee & Malloch, 1925; N. flavomarginatus McAtee & Malloch, 1925.

Phylogeny and classification.

A recent molecular phylogenetic analysis of Nannocoris ( Frankenberg et al. 2018) included one North American specimen (UCR_ENT 00094252), a female from Texas that we have assigned to the new species N. brevipilus below. This taxon was recovered as part of the pricei species group that is diagnosed by the opening of the male-specific vertex gland being located in a posterior position, i.e. posteriorly on the vertex or on the pronotal collar. The opening is more anterior on the head in males of all other Nannocoris species we have examined (data not shown; see Figure 1 in Frankenberg et al. [2018] for selected species) and it is absent in some species. Males of N. arenarius and the second newly described species, N. anophorus , share the pronotal position of the opening of the vertex gland. We therefore tentatively assign all three Nearctic species to the pricei species group.