Plastocorypha ituriana Bolivar, 1922

Heller, Klaus-Gerhard, Hemp, Claudia, Liu, Chunxiang & Volleth, Marianne, 2014, Taxonomic, bioacoustic and faunistic data on a collection of Tettigonioidea from Eastern Congo (Insecta: Orthoptera), Zootaxa 3785 (3), pp. 343-376 : 370-371

Plastocorypha ituriana Bolivar, 1922

Plastocorypha cabrai Griffini, 1909 stat. rev.

[A] CH 4986, CH 4997 2 ♂

For the identification of Plastocorypha species (five species in OSF) not many characters are available. Our males have a dark orange red face ( Fig. 13 J). Applying this character, the two Plastocorypha forms with black faces ( nigrifrons nigrifrons and vandikana) can be excluded. In these two forms, the tip of the fastigium is tapering, while it is blunt in P. brevipes (see OSF) and our animals. The remaining three forms have all dark orange red (“ferruginous”) faces and are all distributed in Central Africa— brevipes Rehn, 1914 , nigrifrons cabrai Griffini 1909 and ituriana Bolivar 1922 . P. brevipes has shorter hind femora than the other two and our specimens. Bolivar did not give any diagnosis when describing ituriana , only “voisine de vandikana” (=related to vandikana). Although caprai (we propose to treat it as species due to the difference in colour of the face) and ituriana may be the same taxon, we will call our animals at the moment P. ituriana , since the type locality of cabrai (Mayumbe) is near the Atlantic Ocean.

Song. The calling song ( Fig. 17 ) consisted of long echemes (ca. 4 s) with a syllable repetition rate of ca. 40 Hz (T= 21 ºC). In our nightly field recording, two males were imperfectly synchronizing, at the beginning or the end of the echeme the softer singing male could be heard (in Fig. 16 at the end). The echemes were separated by intervals of ca. 25 s.

The stridulatory file ( Fig. 16 C) is similar to that figured in OSF for P. brevipes . In both species there is a small bulge near the proximal end.

Figures

FIGURE 13. Habitus. A— Oxyaspis congensis, active, B— Oxyaspis congensis, nearly at rest, C— Zabalius apicalis inversus, D— Pantecphylus (P.) helleri, E— Batodromeus subulo, F— Lichenochrus congicus, G— Leproscirtus granulosus ♂, H— Leproscirtus granulosus ♀, I— Karniella crassicerca, J— Plastocorypha ituriana.

FIGURE 16. A—Stridulatory file Leproscirtus granulosus (three-quarter view; articulation below); B—Right tegmen of Leproscirtus granulosus; C—Stridulatory file of Plastocorypha ituriana (articulation below). Scales 1 mm.

FIGURE 17. Oscillogram of calling song of Plastocorypha ituriana (6 s sequence).