Hermatobates Carpenter, 1892

Anderson, R. Charles, Adam, M. Shiham & Cheng, Lanna, 2023, Marine insects of the Maldives (Heteroptera: Gerridae, Hermatobatidae and Veliidae; Diptera: Chironomidae) with notes on taxonomy, Indo-Pacific distribution, and ecology, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 71, pp. 478-490 : 485

Genus Hermatobates Carpenter, 1892

The genus Hermatobates was first described by Carpenter in 1892 based on a single male collected from coral reefs at Mabuiag Island in the Torres Strait. The genus is exclusively marine and was considered to include some of the rarest marine insects. Prior to 1977, the nine species described at that time were represented by a total of just 14 type specimens in all the world’s museums, and females of only two species ( H. hawaiiensis China, 1956 and H. singaporensis Cheng, 1976 ) were known ( Cheng, 1976). After its natural habitat was discovered by Cheng (1977) it is not uncommon to find them in intertidal zones of tropical islands in large numbers ( Foster, 1989; Andersen & Weir, 2000; Polhemus & Polhemus, 2006). This genus was originally included in the Gerridae but has now been elevated to its own family ( Andersen & Polhemus, 1976). Polhemus & Polhemus (2012) published a comprehensive review of the family with descriptions of two new species and a key to all 12 recognised species. Another species, from China, was added by Luo et al. (2019).