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Differences in wing venation between parthenogenetic and bisexual species of Empoasca leafhoppers from Madeira Island

Publication . Aguin-Pombo, Dora; Valido, Lia; Sousa, Fábio; Arraiol, Anabela

Empoasca is a large worldwide distributed genus of about 400 species many of which are pests to agricultural plants. Species of Empoasca are bisexual but recently three parthenogenetic morphotypes (A, B and C) of various degrees of polyploidy have been reported from Madeira Island. Females of Empoasca are difficult to identify because they show insufficient morphological diag nostic characters. In this work, we evaluate the utility of wing venation pattern for the identification of the three bisexual and three unisexual taxa of Empoasca present in Madeira. Our main motivation is to test whether the wing venation pattern is a stable char acter and to assess whether it could be suitable to develop an identification key for females of taxa present in Madeira Island. We analysed 107 categorical characters of wing patterns and vein shape in the forewings and hind wings of 677 females. The results showed that wing venation may provide useful characters to identify species of Empoasca despite a considerable amount of in traspecific variation. The variation within each species in wing pattern was analysed and several modifications in vein number such as additional or missing veins and in vein shape as bifurcations or incomplete veins are reported.

2014Journal article

Open access