Afromecopoda monroviana ( Karsch, 1886 )

Heller, Klaus-Gerhard, Hemp, Claudia, Liu, Chunxiang & Volleth, Marianne, 2014, Taxonomic, bioacoustic and faunistic data on a collection of Tettigonioidea from Eastern Congo (Insecta: Orthoptera), Zootaxa 3785 (3), pp. 343-376 : 366

Afromecopoda monroviana ( Karsch, 1886) stat. rev.

At present, there are four named forms in the genus (see Table 8 ), three of them considered as valid species since Kirby (1906). All except A. preussiana ( Karsch, 1891) have spines on the lower side of the hind femora (see key in Redtenbacher 1892). Among the remaining three, A. austera ( Karsch, 1893) differs from the other by its short tegmina. Only in this species and in A. monroviana the hind wings are shorter than the tegmina. So this character and the narrow tegmina separate A. monroviana from the sympatric A. frontalis ( Walker. 1871) . A. monroviana is therefore removed from synonymy and considered as valid species. The species was considered as a synonym of A. frontalis by Kirby (1891) without any comments, probably because of the close proximity of the type localities (Monrovia and Sierra Leone). In recent papers Naskrecki (2007, 2009) mentioned to have found two Afromecopoda species closely together in Ghana, West Africa, one of them identified as A. frontalis .