Urostylididae

Urostylididae
Urostylis pallida
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hemiptera
Suborder: Heteroptera
Infraorder: Pentatomorpha
Superfamily: Pentatomoidea
Family: Urostylididae
Dallas, 1851
Genera
  • Urochelellus Yang, 1937
  • Urolabida Westwood, 1837
  • Urostylis Westwood, 1837
  • Urochela Dallas, 1850

Urostylididae is a family of true bugs and is considered a basal or "primitive" family within the stink-bug lineage. They are found only in Asia. Older works used the spelling Urostylidae but this clashes with the name used for a protozoan family and a spelling correction or emended has been suggested that also avoids the confusion created by homonyms. The family name Urolabididae has also been used for some members in the past.[1]

This family has about a hundred species that have a distribution limited mainly to eastern Asia. Urostylids are somewhat longer (4 to 15 mm) than broad with elongated legs with three tarsal segments and a small head. The antenna has 5 segments of which the first is longer than the head. The base of the antenna has broad tubercles and has a ringed appearance. The simple eyes or ocelli, when present (Urolabida lacks ocelli[2]), are very close to each other. On the underside they show a wide separation between the hind and mid coxae. Other important family characters are the presence of a structure for stridulation, the stridulitrum on the first anal vein of the hind wing and bristles on the claws. The female genital structure has nine gonocoxites that form a M or W-shaped sclerite.[3] They suck plant sap.[4][5] The male reproductive anatomy suggests close affinities to the Tessaratomidae subfamily Natalicolinae. The spermatheca has two pump flanges in two genera which is a feature found also in the Aradidae and Leptopodidae. Thus the phylogeny of the group is unclear but lies within the Pentatomoidea.[6]

Urolabida grayi

In the past the family was divided into two subfamilies but one group the Saileriolinae has since been suggested as a distinct family, Saileriolidae, by at least two studies. The position of Saileriolidae within the Pentatomoidea is still unclear.[3][7]

References

  1. Berger, H.; Heiss, E.; Kerzhner, I.M. (2001). "Removal of Homonymy between Urostylidae Dallas, 1851 (Insecta, Heteroptera) and Urostylidae Buetschli, 1889 (Ciliophora, Hypotrichia)." (PDF). Ann. Naturhist. Mus. Wien 103B: 301–302.
  2. Distant, WL (1902). Fauna of British India. Rhynchota. Volume 1. London: Taylor and Francis. p. 303.
  3. 1 2 Grazia, Jocelia; Schuh, Randall T.; Wheeler, Ward C. (2008). "Phylogenetic relationships of family groups in Pentatomoidea based on morphology and DNA sequences (Insecta: Heteroptera)" (PDF). Cladistics 24: 932–976. doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2008.00224.x.
  4. Schuh, Randall T.; Slater, James Alexander (1995). True Bugs of the World (Hemiptera:Heteroptera): Classification and Natural History. Cornell University Press. pp. 245–246.
  5. Ren, Shu-Zhi; Lin, Cheng-Shing (2003). "Revision of the Urostylidae of Taiwan, with Descriptions of Three New Species and One New Record (Hemiptera-Heteroptera: Urostylidae)" (PDF). Formosan Entomol. 23: 129–143.
  6. Kumar, R (1971). "Morphology and Relationships of the Pentatomoidea (Heteroptera) 5-Urostylidae". American Midland Naturalist 85 (1): 63–73. doi:10.2307/2423912.
  7. Yao, Yunzhi; Cai, Wanzhi; Rider, David A.; Ren, Dong (2012). "Primipentatomidae fam. nov. (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Pentatomomorpha), an extinct insect family from the Cretaceous of north-eastern China". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology: 1–20. doi:10.1080/14772019.2011.639814.
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