Oxyphyllum Hancock, 1909

Skejo, Josip, Gupta, Sunil Kumar, Chandra, Kailash, Panhwar, Waheed Ali & Franjević, Damjan, 2019, Oriental macropterous leaf-mimic pygmy grasshoppers-genera Oxyphyllum and Paraphyllum (Orthoptera: Tetrigidae) and their taxonomic assignment, Zootaxa 4590 (5), pp. 546-560 : 550-551

Genus Oxyphyllum Hancock, 1909

http:// orthoptera .speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.aspx?TaxonNameID=1100590

Oxyphyllum Hancock, 1909: 393 (original description),

Oxyphyllum: Hancock 1915: 61 (listed in catalogue of Indian Tetrigidae ),

Oxyphyllum: Fletcher 1921: 2 ((listed in catalogue of Indian fauna)),

Oxyphyllum: Günther 1938: 322 (included in key),

Oxyphyllum: Steinmann 1970: 85 (listed in catalogue of Oriental Tetrigidae ),

Oxyphyllum: Blackith 1992: 130 (listed in catalogue of SE Asian Tetrigidae , with literature overview),

Oxyphyllum: Shishodia 1993: 182 (cited for West Bengal in catalogue),

Oxyphyllum: Yin et al. 1996: 892 (listed in catalogue),

Oxyphyllum: Otte 1997: 25 (listed in catalogue),

Oxyphyllum: Mahmood et al. 2004: 31 (new record),

Oxyphyllum: Shishodia et al. 2010: 142 (listed in check-list of Indian Orthoptera ).

Type species. Oxyphyllum pennatum Hancock 1909 , by original designation. Remarks. Otte (1997) erroneously recorded the type species of this genus as based on monotypy, while in the original description type species was really designated by Hancock (1909).

Composition and distribution. Type species only, inhabiting Pakistan , central and NE India.

Justification of the generic placement. Genus Oxyphyllum is assigned to Tetriginae because it shares diagnostic morphological characters with typical Tetriginae— Tetrix , Paratettix , and Hedotettix . It definitely shows closer affinity to Tetriginae than to Cladonotinae (see Table 1 .). It was assigned to Cladonotinae ( Hancock, 1909; Tumbrinck, 2014) because of the widened scutellum and leaf like appearance. We assign it to Tetriginae because of the following set of characters: (1) short frontal costa; (2) frontal costa bifurcation, lateral ocelli, and antennal grooves positioned high, (3) vertex prominent, (4) pronotum without pronotal projections that are arranged as recognizable FM, FL, PM, MM, MML, and ML, (5) lateral lobes of the pronotum directed downwards, slightly sidewards [should be compared in future to certain Asian Metrodorinae ] (6) fore and mid femora without strong teeth, undulated or weakly lobated, (7) posthumeral spots present on the disc of pronotum, (8) pulvilli of the first segment of the hind tarsi with apical teeth and (9) alae surpassing pronotal apex.

Generic diagnosis. The genus is morphologically most similar to Tetriginae genera such as Tetrix , Hedotettix , and Paratettix , not to Paraphyllum , as previously reported (e.g. Hancock 1915; Günther 1938). Antennae of Oxyphyllum are 12 segmented, frontal costa is short, vertex is slightly projected in front of eyes, lateral lobes are directed downwards with rounded apices, humeral angle is widely oblique or weakly angular, posthumeral spots are present, and alae surpassing tegmina. Those are characters of Asian Tetriginae , especially certain SE Asian Tetriginae taxa with dentate hind femora (see e.g. Liang & Zheng 1998). Oxyphyllum differs from typical Cladonotinae in not having long frontal costa and having high position of lateral ocelli. It does not exhibit horns as Xerophyllini , nor high convex vertex as Cladonotini . Furthermore, it differs from Cladonotinae members by lacking pronotal projections, weak femoral (antegenicular and genicular) teeth, elongated first tarsal segments of the hind legs, and presence of apical teeth on pulvilli of the hind tarsi. Oxyphyllum can be easily distinguished from other Tetriginae members by the following set of characters: median carina of the pronotum strongly elevated (leaflike), pronotum projected over the head and covering vertex, fore femora with two weak lobes on their lower margins, mid femora with undulated dorsal margins and with three weak lobes on ventral margins, dorsal and ventral margins of the hind femora finely toothed.

Notes. The genus is monotypic, O. pennatum being the only species within the genus. A good description of the genus and the species was presented by Hancock (1909). Specimens examined by us do not differ from Hancock's description and are regarded conspecific with the female holotype from Darjeeling (West Bengal). Here we present updated description, measurements and photographs of morphological characters including now O. pennatum from Chhattisgarh. We also present a small, low quality photograph (the only available) of a female specimen from Pakistan, reported by Mahmood et al. (2004).