Rhodopsalta leptomera ( Myers, 1921 )

Bator, John, Marshall, David C, Hill, Kathy B R, Cooley, John R, Leston, Adam & Simon, Chris, 2022, Phylogeography of the endemic red-tailed cicadas of New Zealand (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Rhodopsalta), and molecular, morphological and bioacoustical confirmation of the existence of Hudson’s Rhodopsalta microdora, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 195 (4), pp. 1219-1244 : 1239

Rhodopsalta leptomera ( Myers, 1921)

(Supporting Information, Fig. S5 )

The largest of the three species in this genus, R. leptomera , is readily distinguished by its strawto orange–yellow-coloured legs and forewing costal margins. The species has a longer, more slender body and wings (on average) than its congeners and more abundant short silvery pubescence ( Myers, 1921). Rhodopsalta leptomera is restricted to the NI ( Fig. 2 ; Supporting Information, Fig. S1 ), where it uses dune grass and sedge species such as the introduced marram [ Ammophila arenaria (L.) Roem. & Schult.] and endemic pingao [ Ficinia spiralis (A.Rich.) Muasya & de Lange ] ( Myers, 1929a). Rhodopsalta leptomera is unique among NZ cicadas in its apparent dependence upon coastal dune habitat. Other, unrelated cicadas inhabiting saline environments can be found in the south-eastern USA (genus Diceroprocta Stål, 1870 ), Argentina ( Derotettix Berg, 1882 ; Simon et al. 2019), South Africa [ Azanicada zuluensis (Villet, 1987) ; Villet & Van Noort, 1999], Queensland, Australia [ Arunta perulata (Guérin-Méneville, 1831) ; Sanborn, 1996; Sanborn et al., 2004], south-eastern Australia [the ‘sand fairy’, Sylphoides arenaria (Distant, 1907) ; ( Moulds, 1990, 2012)] and NZ (Kikihia ‘tuta’ along SI saline mud flat sedges and grasses). Adults are active from November to March ( Myers, 1929b).

Figures

Figure 1. Palaeogeographical maps depicting topographical change in the North Island of New Zealand throughout the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. Maps were modified and reprinted from Ellis et al. (2015), with permission.

Figure 2. Maps of Simon-lab field records of the three Rhodopsalta species.

Figure 5. Single-gene Bayesian phylogenetic trees based on mitochondrial cox1 (1486 bp; A) and nuclear EF1α (798 bp; B) using CIPRES v.3.3. Branch support values represent Bayesian posterior probabilities and RAXML bootstrap percentages from 1000 non-parametric pseudoreplicates. The number of parsimony informative sites is 239 for cox1 and 61 for EF1α.