Hyantia thalassina ( Germar, 1830 ) Sanborn, Allen F., 2020

Sanborn, Allen F., 2020, The cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) of Suriname including the description of two new species, five new combinations, and three new records, Zootaxa 4881 (3), pp. 453-481 : 470-471

Hyantia thalassina ( Germar, 1830) n. comb.

Cicada thalassina Germar 1830: 44 (8). ( Surinam)

Cicada thalassina Metcalf 1963b: 834 .

Remarks. Germar’s (1830) description is limited incorporating only part of Stoll’s (1781) description. Unfortunately Germar’s species is not represented in his collection in Lviv ( Shydlovskyy & Holovachov 2005) so we have no specimen to view. Germar (1830) states the species is green above and fuscous underneath, the abdomen is pilose, and the fore wings white-hyaline with brown veins. He also references Fig. 127 of Stoll without a year. Stoll (1781) describes the Sleek Green Song Cicada as an insect with brown eyes, the head and trunk green, a green abdomen with small green hairs, very close to each other, brown ventral body and legs, fore wings transparent white with brown veins.

The only all green species known from neighboring Brazil is Hyantia honesta ( Walker, 1850) or from neighboring French Guiana is H. bahlenhorsti . These are both green species with golden hairs on the abdomen. They also possess a smoothly curved anterior head, the head about as wide as the mesonotum but not as wide as the pronotum, the wide pronotal collar and the bend in the fore wing at the node seen in Stoll’s (1781) image. Based on these similarities and the lack of any other potential genera for the animal known to inhabit the region, Cicada thalassina Germar 1830 is reassigned here to Hyantia to become Hyantia thalassina ( Germar 1830) n. comb. Other primarily green species from the region are represented in the genus Carineta Amyot & Audinet-Serville, 1843 but these can be eliminated quickly as an option for Germar’s species by the head being narrower than the mesonotum with the head and prothorax being roughly triangular in Carineta , characteristics contradicted in Stoll’s (1781) drawing.

There is a possibility that H. thalassina ( Germar 1830) n. comb. could be either of the known species of Hyantia . If the scale of Stoll’s (1781) diagrams is correct and Fig. 126 is in fact Fidicina mannifera , then H. thalassina n. comb. is more similar to H. bahlenhorsti in size. A number of specimens from Suriname will help to determine if H. thalassina ( Germar 1830) n. comb. is a unique species of if one of the two current species needs to be synonymized.

Distribution. The species has been reported only from Suriname ( Metcalf 1963b).