Proarna pulverea ( Olivier, 1790 )

Sanborn, Allen F., 2020, The cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) of Suriname including the description of two new species, five new combinations, and three new records, Zootaxa 4881 (3), pp. 453-481 : 466

Proarna pulverea ( Olivier, 1790)

Cicada pulverea Olivier 1790: 759 . ( Surinam)

Remarks. As was customary at the time, Olivier’s (1790) original description was short and did not provide many details of the species. The powdery cicada was described in Latin as a whitish-gray cicada with the thorax and abdomen sprinkled with whitish powder. The additional comments in French suggest a striped, ash-gray animal, transparent wings without spots, a blackish abdomen, and the body covered with a bluish-white dust ( Olivier 1790). Olivier (1790) compares the size of C. pulverea to his C. garrula Olivier, 1790 (now Quintilia catena ( Fabricius, 1775)) . Stål (1866) gives body measurements of body size of 20–23 mm and wing span of 50–60 mm for Q. catena . This is slightly larger than P. proximorubrovenosa n. sp. and body length is similar to P. olivieri although P. olivieri has a greater wing span (about 64 mm).

Olivier (1797) and Waterhouse (1886) illustrated P. pulverea . The drawing of Waterhouse (1886) shows much more detail than the crude drawing of Olivier (1797). Although the description lists transparent wings as characteristic of the species ( Olivier 1790), there appear to be small spots of infuscation on some of the fore wing crossveins and on the ambient vien in Waterhouse’s (1886) drawing. The species is similar in general appearance to several Proarna species but can be distinguished by the posteriorly widening longitudinal fascia on either side of the pronotal midline, transverse abdominal fascia, lack of infuscation on proximal fore wing apical cell 1 and distal veins between apical cells, strongly curved origin of radius anterior 2, lack of curvature in distal veins separating apical cells, and the fore wing length about 2.9X width.

The remaining Suriname species of the genus can be distinguished using the above characters. In addition, the fore wing length is about 3.15X width in P. proximorubrovenosa n. sp. and the larger wing span (about 64 mm), the strongly curved base of the costal margin, fore wing apical cells longer than ulnar cells, and fore wing length about 3.25X width distinguish P. olivieri from P. pulverea .

Distribution. The species has been reported from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Suriname, Uruguay, and South America ( Metcalf 1963a; Sanborn 2013; Sanborn & Heath 2014). The references to Mexico have been questioned ( Sanborn 2007b).