Stenolemus Signoret 1858

Tatarnic, Nikolai J. & Cassis, Gerasimos, 2011, The thread-legged bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Reduviidae: Emesinae) of Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, Zootaxa 2967, pp. 21-43 : 37

Stenolemus Signoret 1858

Stenolemus Signoret 1858: 251 (new genus, type species: Stenolemus spiniventris Signoret 1858 , by monotypy); Wygodzinsky 1956: 204 (key, description); Wygodzinsky 1966: 316 (description); Maldonado 1990: 93 (catalogue); Cassis and Gross 1995: 289 (catalogue).

Phantasmatophanes Kirkaldy 1908: 369 (new genus, type species: Phantasmatophanes muiri Kirkaldy 1908 , by original designation); Bergroth 1911: 17 (synonymy).

Diagnosis. This genus is recognised by the following combination of characters: body densely setate, macropterous; forewing with two (rarely three) closed cells (discal and basal); short cross vein (Rs) joining discal cell to costal margin (R); foretarsi two-segmented; and anterior and humeral angles of pronotum with projections.

Remarks. Wygodzinsky (1966) revised the genus and provided a detailed description of the genus. In his key to the genera of Emesini , this genus keyed out with the saliently similar genus Stenolemoides McAtee & Malloch. The latter genus however is not setate and lacks the prominent humeral angle projections. A number of Emesini have the peculiar narrowing (petiolate) of the pronotum (e.g. Myiophanes Reuter, Poleuchenia McAtee & Malloch ), and although it is characteristic of Stenolemus , it cannot be reliably used as a generic character.

Wygodzinsky (1966) indicated that there was no reliable character to subdivide the genus across zoogeographical faunas. Stenolemus comprises 62 species worldwide ( Maldonado 1990), with the diversity greater in the Eastern Hemisphere (36 species) than in the Western Hemisphere (26 species), with most of the diversity found in tropical regions. In Australia the genus is represented by five species, many of which are broadly distributed in arid and semi-arid regions ( Cassis and Gross 1995).