Perixerus Gerstaecker, 1873

Fontana, Paolo, Mariño-Pérez, Ricardo, Sanabria-Urbán, Salomón & Woller, Derek A., 2017, Studies in Mexican Grasshoppers: Three new species of Dactylotini (Acrididae: Melanoplinae) from Mexico and a review of existing conspecifics with comments on their geographical distributions, Zootaxa 4337 (3), pp. 301-343 : 321-326

Perixerus Gerstaecker, 1873

urn:lsid: Orthoptera .speciesfile.org:TaxonName:55118

Perixerus GERSTAECKER. 1873. STETT. ENTOMOL. Z. 34: 192.

Perixerus BRUNNER VON WATTENWYL. 1893. ANN. MUS. CIV. STOR. NAT. GENOVA 2 13 (33): 147.

Perixerus BRUNER, L. 1908. BIOLOGIA CENTRALI-AMERICANA 2: 233.

Perixerus HEBARD. 1932. TRANS. AMER. ENTOMOL. SOC. 58 (3): 293.

Perixerus ROBERTS, H.R. 1947. PROC. ACAD. NAT. SCI. PHILAD. 99:221.

Perixerus REHN, J.A.G. 1963. PROC. ACAD. NAT. SCI. PHILAD. 115:11.

Perixerus OTTE, D. 1995. ORTHOPTERA SPECIES FILE 4:405.

Perixerus YIN, X.-C., J. SHI & Z. YIN. 1996. SYNONYMIC CATALOGUE OF GRASSHOPPERS AND THEIR ALLIES OF THE WORLD ( ORTHOPTERA : CAELIFERA) 535.

General description. Body squat, stout and heavily pubescent, fastigium scarcely protruding from above; eyes in close proximity and not strongly prominent; frontal ridge with almost parallel sides. Head and pronotum strongly rugose (pronotum more-so). Prosternal process cilindro-conical, hardly bent backwards. Pronotum almost straight in lateral view, rounded transversally; sulcus well-defined; lateral carinae absent; posterior margin rounded, emarginated. Tegmina reduced, shorter than pronotum, convex, strongly and densely reticulated, meeting on dorsum; wing rudimental. Fore and middle femurs moderately swollen; hind legs with dark and light contrasting areas. External male terminalia: furculae vestigial with either a short or long gap between, and supra-anal plate often subtriangular with sinouse lateral sides. Cerci relatively short to elongate, wider at base and typically narrowed at apex with apical portion curved inwards midway to varying degrees within different species. Subgenital plate with pointed or rounded apex. Internal male genitalia: epiphallus well-sclerotized with ancorae bent inwards to varying degrees, lophi prominent and subrectangular in addition to bending anteriorly to some degree, post-epiphallic lobe moderately wrinkled. Ectophallus with prominent, “N”-shaped rami and fairly elaborate sheath of aedeagus. Endophallus with relatively short dorsal valves of aedeagus and ventral valves that are fairly complex compared to other melanoplines. External female terminalia: supra-anal plate subtriangular, cerci relatively small and subconical, and dorsal valves of ovipositor with small teeth along dorsobasal margin ( Tables 3 & 4).

Discussion. The genus Perixerus was described by Gerstaecker in 1873 for the species Perixerus squamipennis . In the same year, Stål described the genus Hermistria for the species Hermistria pulchripes . Both species were described based on female specimens and have “ Mexico ” as their type locality. In the following years, authors only acknowledged Perixerus (Bruner, 1908; Hebard, 1932) and other species were assigned to this genus: Perixerus laevis Rehn, 1900 ; P. variabilis Rehn, 1904 ; P. hirsutus Hebard, 1935 ; and P. gloriosus Hebard, 1935 . Roberts (1947) stated that the two genera and species were synonymous giving the priority to Perixerus because Gerstaecker published earlier in the year. Roberts also briefly described the male and restricted the genus Perixerus to only the original species, P. squamipennis . According to the original description of Gerstaecker (1873), the redescription of Roberts (1947), and after reviewing images of the Gerstaecker type material (Cigliano et al., 2017) ( Fig. 19 ), we can assign the majority of our material to P. squamipennis , but not all. We have males and females in our possession that surely belong to the genus Perixerus , but must be considered as two distinct species. In order to clarify, we have provided a brief re-description of the genus Perixerus and an updated description (in particular, a detailed update of the terminalia descriptions) of P. squamipennis based on our material and according to the respective literature.

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Figures

FIGURE 19. Perixerus squamipennis SYNTYPE FEMALE FROM MFN: A. HABITUS, LEFT LATERAL VIEW; B. HABITUS, DORSAL VIEW; C. SPECIMEN LABELS; [photo credit: Sigfrid Ingrisch, Orthoptera Species File]; Hermistria pulchripes STåL, 1873 HOLOTYPE FEMALE FROM NHRS: A. HABITUS, LEFT LATERAL VIEW; B. HABITUS, DORSAL VIEW; C. SPECIMEN LABELS.