Sagehen Creek Field Station

10 May, 08 AM - 14 May, 02 AM

The family Miridae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera), or plant bugs, is one of the largest families of true bugs with over 10,000 described species and potentially thousands more undescribed. Many of the genera in the seven subfamilies of Miridae are known to have close associations with particular species or genera of host-plants, upon which these insects feed and reproduce. One tribe within the Miridae, the Leucophoropterini, is a relatively unique lineage in that many members are not specific to certain host plants, and several are also ant-mimics. Nearly all of the species of Leucophoropterini are from Australia and the Indo-Pacific, and until recently their closest relatives to other tribes within the Miridae was unknown. However, in a preliminary study by Menard, Schuh and Woolley (in prep) the closest relatives to the Leucophoropterini are not from either region, but a lineage of at least two species with distributions in California, Asia and Japan (Tuxedo Schuh, Plesiodema Reuter and Pseudophylus Yasunaga, respectively). Due to the unusual biogeographical placement of the closest relatives to the Leucophoropterini in the initial study, further investigation of the species is required to confirm the relationship and investigate the morphological characters that unite the two related groups. Field work at the Sagehen Creek Field Station on will hopefully yield more samples of both Tuxedo and Plesiodema from their host plants of breeding oaks and pines distributed in California, respectively. These samples will be used in both a morphological and molecular analysis of relatedness to the already sampled Leucophoropterini taxa, as well as the samples from Asia of Pseudophylus and Asian Plesiodema taxa.

Visit #27105 @Sagehen Creek Field Station

Approved

Under Project # 24679 | Research

Californian - Asian links in Phylinae (Heteroptera: Miridae)

research_scientist - University of Oklahoma

Reservation Members(s)

Katrina Menard May 10 - 14, 2012 (5 days)
Katrina Menard May 10 - 14, 2012 (5 days)

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