Burmempheria Li, Wang & Yao, 2020

Hakim, Marina, Azar, Dany & Huang, Di-Ying, 2023, First record of fossil psocodeans in copula from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber, Zootaxa 5396 (1), pp. 74-93 : 76

Genus Burmempheria Li, Wang & Yao, 2020

(= Latempheria Li, Wang & Yao, 2022 )

Type species. Burmempheria densuschaetae Li, Wang & Yao, 2020

Remarks. Li et al. (2022) distinguished Latempheria from Burmempheria by two main diagnostic features of the body structures: (1) the external valvulae (broad in Latempheria vs. rod-like in Burmempheria ); (2) the setae on the tibiae (‘all tibiae with two rows of obvious setae in Latempheria vs. with setae or bare in Burmempheria ’). Nevertheless, they assigned Burmempheria curvatavena Li, Yoshizawa & Yao, 2022 (in Li et al., 2022) to Burmempheria despite noting that the specimen has all tibiae with two rows of obvious setae (like in the diagnosis of Latempheria ). The latter specimen was identified as a male (with no females available to examine the structures of the external valvulae) and the diagnostic features relied on for this classification are either found in both Burmempheria and Latempheria (‘Sc long and reaching to the anterior margin’—which is phrased incoherently in the Remarks section and depicted inaccurately in the illustration, but is interpreted correctly in the description section in Li et al. (2022); Sc does not reach the anterior margin but instead curves back to connect with R 1 and it is actually a cross-vein that reaches the anterior margin—and ‘lack of pulvillus’) or incomplete in Latempheria (‘flagellum with more than 30 segments’ which is broken at 25 flagellomeres in the specimen of Latempheria ).

We re-examined these two diagnostic characters in the holotype material of both genera, and upon observation, we determined that there is no support for genus Latempheria . The genitalia have a similar shape in both genera, which can be noted from available illustrations ( Li et al., 2020: fig. 2H; Li et al., 2022: figs 3I, 3J). The difference in these structures described by Li et al. (2020, 2022) is a result of specimen orientation. The two rows of spines on the tibiae, clearly visible on the middle and hind legs, are observed in all species of Burmempheria and Latempheria . Consequently, we synonymise the two genera based on the currently available data.

The number of apical spurs on the tibiae seems variable (two or three depending on the pair of legs) in species of Burmempheria : usually two on the fore tibiae and three on the middle and hind tibiae is the trend observed in our material belonging to Burmempheria . This character can be difficult to observe at times due to the position of the legs, thus additional investigations and future discoveries will reveal the exact value of this character for generic or specific diagnosis.