Salomona Blanchard 1853

Rentz, Dcf & Su, You Ning, 2019, Studies in Australian Tettigoniidae: Three New Species of Agraeciini From North-eastern Australia Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae; Conocephalinae; Agraeciini, Zootaxa 4623 (2), pp. 283-305 : 296

Salomona Blanchard 1853

Salomona was revised by Willemse (1959). Rentz and Balderson (1979) included S. solida Walker in their catalogue of Australian Tettigoniidae . Cigliano et al. (2019) include 81 species in Salomona plus 10 subspecies. Ingrisch (1998) included several species of Salomona in his monograph of the Agraeciini of the Oriental Region but no Salomona species from the Australasian region was included. Here we describe a large species that seems to be confined to Iron Range, Qld, Map 1.

Salomona nori 3 Rentz & Su, sp. nov.

Figs. 9–11, 12A–G, 13B, 14C); Table 2; Map 1

ANIC Number: Salomona sp. 4

Comments. Recent improvements in the roads, including ingress and egress, to Kutini-Payamu (Iron Range) in far north Queensland has resulted in an influx of tourists to the area, many of them with entomological interests. This coupled with the ease of photographing natural history images has resulted in many inquiries concerning a “large, robust ferocious katydid that lives in tree holes. Tour guides have discovered this katydid on their night tours. Here we provide a name for the species and discuss a related species from Sunday Island, Qld. We present some notes on the taxonomic position, biology and ecology of the new species.

History. A single Salomona species, S. solida Walker , has been described form northeast Australia. No additional specimens have been encountered since the original description many years ago and there was conjecture that type specimens may have been mislabelled. It has appeared sparsely in the literature but the following virtually 3 We take pleasure in naming this species in honour of our colleague, Dr. Norihiro Ueshima. For over 40 years Dr. Ueshima has been the recipient of an annual shipment of tettigoniid testes from DCFR, mostly from Australian localities. He has provided detailed analyses of the material when requested.