Doratura J. Sahlberg. A 1871
Creators: name: Bückle, Christoph
name: Guglielmino, Adalgisa
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hemiptera
Cicadellidae
Doratura

description: Doratura J. Sahlberg, 1871
Type species: Athysanus stylatus Boheman, 1847: 31.
Doratura (Doraturina) Emeljanov, 1964: 403 syn. nov.
Diagnosis. The genus is characterized by the following combination of features: anterior margin of head sharply angled; length of vertex at most equal to its minimum width between eyes; ocelli near anterior margin of head; pronotum not carinate laterally; brachypterous condition prevalent; hind tibia without apical spur; connective with anterior arms ± touching anteriorly; style apophysis long, with median tooth.
Description. Vertex in lateral view with anterior margin sharply edged (also in nymphs), in dorsal view slightly or distinctly longer in the middle than near the eyes, equally rounded or sub-triangularly protruding. Length of pronotum largely equal over its whole width with lateral, ventrad bent portion only slightly shorter. Forewings generally short, in most cases somewhat or distinctly longer than wide; hind margin sub-truncated with inner angle rounded. Females with distinctly or strongly protruding ovipositor. Body length about 2.5–4.2 mm in males, 3.5–6 mm in females.
Vertex impressed in the middle immediately behind anterior margin, shiny; pronotum shiny in anterior half, transversely rugose in posterior half; scutellum opaque with very fine microgranules; wings shiny with irregular rows of indistinct punctures bearing very small hairs, veins ± indistinct, with transverse row of more distinct little cells along hind margin; abdomen opaque due to very fine microreticulation.
Coloration. Basic colour pale yellow-brown. Forewings ± hyaline, or in many cases green, more rarely light blue, in both cases with metallic tinge (well visible in living specimens, often indistinct in dried material). Face with two black transverse bands, upper one near vertex extending onto temples, lower one extending from frontoclypeus under eyes and continuing often onto prothorax. Anteclypeus often in part or completely black, lora often with black areas. Vertex generally with five spots along anterior margin, in dark specimens sometimes extending to upper portion of face; central spot about quadrangular and distinct, on each side accompanied by other spot at mid-length between central spot and ocelli, and lateral very small spot representing dark basal pigmentation of ocelli; at about mid-length of vertex pair of transverse markings, present only in some species and often lacking or indistinct; near hind margin of vertex third row of markings, consisting sometimes in small lateral spots, and often in two central longitudinal narrow stripes, in dark specimens fused to one about quadrangular marking. Pronotum sometimes with brown indistinctly delimited longitudinal sagittal band continuing onto scutellum; forewings ± hyaline or with some brown marking, especially near posterior margin and along clavus border, lateral margins generally whitish. First tergites of abdomen covered by wings, completely or in part black, following free tergites with light sagittal middle line between pair of brown stripes often covered by dark spots; laterally on each side two other brown stripes with or without dark spots; between lateral and median stripes often further row of ± distinct dark spots. Thorax ventrally often partly or completely black, abdominal sternites ± black, often except for hind margins and lateral parts. Legs light, femora above all in basal part with dark areas and near apex with annular marking, tibia with longitudinal markings, apical part of hind legs and base of macrosetae on hind tibia dark. Males generally with black roughly quadrangular or drop-shaped spot on dorsal side of pygofer and rounded black spot on each side of pygofer. Females with rounded black spot on pregenital tergite and ± extended black longitudinal line on pygofer.
All dark markings are often reduced or completely lacking, especially in females, among which totally light specimens occur. On the other side, normally isolated black markings may fuse in dark specimens, resulting in an almost completely black face and vertex, or continuous black bands on the abdomen.
Male genitalia. Pygofer with two to more than ten macrosetae in dorso-caudal region, sometimes concentrated in irregular comb-like row, and field of distinct robust ± dense setae along caudal margin (Fig. 3). Genital valve distinctly shorter than genital plates, in the middle more than two times longer than in its lateral area, hind margin with lateral part oblique, almost straight, and median part convex, widely rounded. Genital plates moderately long, ventrally with macrosetae distributed in irregular rows or completely irregular; apical margins medially and/or laterally rounded or ± angular; lateral margin somewhat convex, straight, or distinctly sinuate (Fig. 1D). Aedeagus with elongate shaft, and basal socle; articulation between shaft and socle generally flexible (Fig. 10B); socle sometimes high and well developed, sometimes low, in few species very flat and fused with shaft (Fig. 37A). Styles generally very elongate, curved laterad, and narrowing towards their apex beyond denticle (Fig. 1E), in few cases rather robust, equally in width (Figs 28H, K), extending along median border of genital plates; denticle directed mediad or ± ventrad in position somewhat proximal or distal from mid-length, rarely near apex. Connective slightly bent dorsad, with basal stem distinct, flat with dorsal ridge, shorter than anterior arms or almost equal to them in length, attached under caudal margin of aedeagus socle, and anterior arms long, ± parallel with point of articulation of styles (Figs 1B, C).
Female genitalia. Ovipositor (Figs 4, 5) long, distinctly protruding over pygofer tip; length of saw about half of length of 2 nd valvula. First valvula with dorsal sculpturing pattern maculose; sculpturing submarginal, with unsculptured dorsal band. Second valvula abruptly broadened medially; dorsal teeth present on apical 1/2; teeth obtusely triangular and serrated.
Hind margin of pregenital sternite straight (Fig. 19C), in the middle slightly convex (Fig. 19A) or with ± distinct notch (Fig. 20I), sometimes strongly protruding caudad, lobe (Fig. 34A) or tongue-shaped (Fig. 34B).
Remarks. The ovipositor valvulae display the features typical for Chiasmini, as described by Zahniser & Dietrich (2013) (see also Zahniser, 2008: figs 9–12, 25–28, 82–85, and Zahniser & Dietrich, 2008: figs 5h, 8b).
We also studied the morphology of the ovipositor base (Fig. 1F), which provides in some other genera of Deltocephalinae, e. g. Cicadula Zetterstedt, 1840 (see Remane & Fründ, 1986), Jassargus Zachvatkin, 1934 (see Schulz, 1976), and Paraphlepsius (see Hamilton, 1975) useful characters for species discrimination. However, in the genus Doratura this structure displays apparently only slight variations among different species and even species groups.
Variability of coloration in the adults (Figs 22A, D). As the intensity of coloration is highly variable, the pattern of dark markings furnishes only in a few cases reliable characters for species discrimination. On the one side, specimens nearly devoid of any dark markings occur, on the other there are specimens with very extended and confluent markings, for example with a completely dark face. Often, but not always, dark specimens are found in mountain areas rather than at lowland sites; they are particularly frequent in the cold steppes of Central Asia as well. Similarly, adults deriving from nymphs that developed under short day conditions are generally darker than other ones developed during the summer months, with possible differences in the coloration between the two generations of bivoltine taxa. Moreover, even in specimens with medium extended markings, their shape and position may vary to a high degree.
Juvenile stages. In some taxa, the nymphs (at least their fifth instar) display important coloration features (see Stöckmann et al., 2013). D. stylata (Fig. 9A), for instance, is easily distinguishable in its juvenile stage from D. exilis (Fig. 9B) and D. impudica (Fig. 9I), the latter two taxa often occurring together with the former one. These characters have been confirmed for populations in the Mediterranean area.
Variability of coloration in the nymphs. Among nymphs of the same species, specimens occur with very distinct markings (Fig. 9G) together with others which display an almost homogeneous light yellowish coloration in which the pattern of markings is not easy to discern (Fig. 9E). For example, specimens of D. butzele Guglielmino & Bückle, 2021 and D. paludosa with only indistinct markings were observed in several cases. We do not know whether such pale nymphs develop later to equally pale adults, as are observed in several Doratura species (particularly D. homophyla).
description: Published as part of Bückle, Christoph & Guglielmino, Adalgisa, 2022, Revision of the genus Doratura Sahlberg (Hemiptera, Cicadellidae, Deltocephalinae) with particular regard to its distribution in Italy and description of four new species, pp. 1-116 in Zootaxa 5112 (1) on pages 6-11, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5112.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/6340589