Isophya rhodopensis Ramme, 1951

Dragan P. Chobanov, Beata Grzywacz, Ionuţ Ş. Iorgu, Battal Cιplak, Maya B. Ilieva & Elżbieta Warchałowska-Śliwa, 2013, Review of the Balkan Isophya (Orthoptera: Phaneropteridae) with particular emphasis on the Isophya modesta group and remarks on the systematics of the genus based on morphological and acoustic data, Zootaxa 3658 (1), pp. 1-81 : 34

Isophya rhodopensis Ramme, 1951 , sensu novo

Isophya rhodopensis Ramme : Ramme 1951 (sp.n.).

Isophya petkovi Peshev , syn.n. as ssp.: Peshev 1959a (sp.n.). Isophya leonorae Kaltenbach , syn.n. as ssp.: Kaltenbach 1965 (sp.n.). Isophya kisi Peshev , syn.n.: Peshev 1981 (sp.n.).

Morphological description: see the references above; Bey-Bienko 1954; Harz 1969 (as I. rhodopensis , I. petkovi and I. leonorae ); Ingrisch and Paviċeviċ 1985 (as I. leonorae ). Karyotype: Warchałowska-Śliwa et al. 2008 (as I. rhodopensis , I. petkovi , I. kisi ).

Synonymy: see below.

Supplement to the description and a diagnosis: The body is large, stout, ventral keels of hind femora bear 1–2 small spines (rarely spines lack). The body colouration is fresh green, sometimes with two dorsal bands of white, pink or yellowish colour. Male tegmina are wide, longer or equal to the pronotum length, not distinctly bulged; their disc may be greenish (in the western and mountain populations) or yellowish-brown (in the eastern and lowland populations) with dark stridulatory area. CuP is thick, long (>3/4 of the width of metazone), greenish or yellowish coloured. In I. petkovi CuP may be distinctly approached to CuA. The stridulatory file has large number (130–180) of densely packed teeth. The cercus tooth is very typical—long, very wide, frequently crest shaped; the apex of cerci has dense strong hairs. The song consists of groups of two to many (>20) syllables (rarely single syllables occur) with a long syllable interval. The syllable (main part) has dense decrescending impulses and lasts 50–300 ms. Sometimes or, in some populations/taxa always, the syllables are followed by one or few after-clicks. The heterochromatin content of the chromosomes, especially X, is highly variable (Warchałowska-Śliwa et al. 2008).

The species is distributed in the central part of Southern Bulgaria and the neighbouring territory of Greece on the territory of the Rila-Rhodope Mountain group (see below).

Notes to the literature distribution data: The data by Nedelkov (1908) for I. modesta from “Rodopi” is tentatively referred to I. rhodopensis . And though the case may concern I. bureschi , usually Nedelkov has determined his material of I. bureschi as I. modestior , also mentioned from “Rodopi”. Thus, we believe Nedelkov had been working with material of both species occurring sympatrically in the Northwestern Rhodope Mts.

The record by Paviċeviċ (1983a) for I. rhodopensis from Beljanica Mt. was referred to I. miksici (see above).