Abstract
IN the first volume of Dominion Museum Records in Entomology (Wellington, N.Z.), June 1948, p. 63, Carl J. Drake and J. T. Salmon contribute a short paper entitled "A Second Xenophyes from New Zealand". Under the name of Xenophyes forsteri, the austhors describe a new species of the small and little-known family Pelorididse from New Zealand. The family, it may be added, is also known from southern Argentina, Patagonia, Australia and Tasmania. It provides, therefore, an additional link in the evidence from other sources of a direct land connexion between the South American and Australasian continents. Only seven species grouped under three genera of Pelorididse are at present known. What little biological evidence there is available indicates that its members feed largely, or wholly, on mosses, and inhabit damp situations. The family was originally placed in the Hemiptera - Heteroptera and, since the antennas are concealed from view, it was relegated to the series Cryptocerata. Recent research, however, indicates that its affinities lie with the suborder Homoptera and that it represents a separate and new series named by Myers and China in 1929 the Coleorrhyncha. This view is now generally accepted by most students of Hemiptera. The species are all very small creatures the hind wings of which are vestigial or absent. The tegmina occur in probably all the species in two forms, macropterous and braehypterous, although both these types have not yet been found in all cases.
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An Interesting Hemipterous Insect from New Zealand. Nature 162, 919–920 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162919d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162919d0