Uvarovitettix Bazyluk & Kis 1960, comb. nov
Creators: name: Skejo, Josip
name: Rebrina, Fran
name: Buzzetti, Filippo Maria
name: Ivković, Slobodan
name: Rašić, Alan
name: Tvrtković, Nikola
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Orthoptera
Tetrigidae
Uvarovitettix

description: Genus Uvarovitettix Bazyluk & Kis, 1960
Species typica.: Mesotettix (Uvarovitettix) transsylvanicus Bazyluk & Kis, 1960 by original designation according to article 68.2. of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, 1999).
Species: The genus is represented by four species (Devriese, 2014): U. nodulosus (Fieber, 1853) in Portugal (Fig. 4), SW Spain and North Africa (Devriese, 1996); U. transsylvanicus (Bazyluk & Kis, 1960) in Slovenia, Croatia and Romania (discussed below), U. pseudodepressus Ingrisch, 2006 in Nepal (Bheri province) (Ingrisch, 2006) and U. gibberosus (Wang & Zheng, 1993) in East China (Anhui) (Wang & Zheng, 1993).
Generic diagnosis. Paranota with only one lobe, tegmenula and alae rudimentary, hind femora knees with deep incision (Devriese, 1996).
Taxonomy and comments. U. nodulosus, and U. transsylvanicus fit the generic diagnosis, but U. pseudodepressus and U. gibberosus do not.
Ingrisch (2006) has shown that U. pseudodepressus is most similar to Tetrix serrifemoralis Zheng, 1998 and Depressotetrix depressa (Brisout de Barneville, 1848), the latter of which has been moved several times between the genera Tetrix Latreille, 1802, Dasyleurotettix Rehn, 1904, Depressotetrix Karaman, 1960 and Uvarovitettix Bazyluk & Kis, 1960, but according to molecular studies it belongs to the genus Tetrix (Hochkirch, unpublished). U. pseudodepressus has two paranotal lobes, fully developed tegmenula and long alae. Its integument is more similar to D. depressa and T. serrifemoralis than to U. nodulosus and U. transsylvanicus. Thus, we propose two new combinations supported by morphological (here presented) and molecular (Hochkirch, unpublished) data: Tetrix pseudodepressa (Ingrisch, 2006) comb. nov and Tetrix depressa comb. nov., which means that Depressotetrix Karaman, 1960 syn. nov. is synonym of Tetrix Latreille, 1802.
Differential diagnosis of the genus Depressotetrix syn. nov. as presented in the original description (Karaman, 1960) (where Depressotetrix syn. nov. is described as monotypic subgenus of Tetrix). 1) The vertex is two times wider than a compound eye and is weakly prominent. 2) The median keel of the pronotum is very elevated in the anterior part of the pronotum and then abruptly falling down forming depression in the discus of the pronotum (from this character originates the generic name and epitheton). 3) The mid femora are narrower than visible part of a tegmen (= elytron) or as the same width as a tegmen. 4) Margins of all femora are wavy (Karaman, 1960). All these characters are also found in the genus Tetrix. 1) The vertex is ± two times wider than compound eye in a lot of species of the genus (e.g. T. bipunctata, T. subulata, T. undulata, T. sierrana Rehn & Grant, 1956, T. ornata (Say, 1824)), 2) there are other Tetrix species with elevated median keel of the pronotum (e.g. slightly elevated median keel in T. bolivari that also forms a weak depression, T. arcunotus Ingrisch, 2001 with pronotum very similar to that of T. depressa comb. nov., also T. ruyuanensis Liang, 1998), 3) in many species the mid femur is as narrow as the visible part of a tegmen or narrower (e.g. T. hururanus Ingrisch, 2001, T. ornata, T. undulata) and 4) waviness of the femoral margins in the genus Tetrix can occur in a lot of combinations and is not reliable diagnostic character (e.g. in T. tuerki ventral margins of the fore and the mid femora are very wavy, T. bolivari usually has slightly wavy dorsal margins of the fore an the mid femora, T. arenosa Burmeister, 1838 has slightly wavy margins of all the femora). From all these observations it is evident that the differential characters of the genus Depressotetrix syn. nov. fit within the variability of the genus Tetrix and that it is legitimate to synonymize it with the genus Tetrix.
Further taxonomic studies are necessary, including molecular methods, since the morphology of the subfamily Tetriginae can be very tricky and misleading (Fang et al., 2010). The generic assignments are still preliminary for many Tetrix species.
U. gibberosus has small developed wings (Wang & Zheng, 1993) and thus does not fit the generic diagnosis of Uvarovitettix. Also, it seems unlikely that two flightless species of the same genus have such a disjunct distribution, being separated by ca. 4800 km. Furthermore, other genera with only one paranotal lobe and small wings (e.g. Formosatettix, Formosatettixoides) exist in China (Liang & Zheng, 1998) and U. gibberosus might either be a member of one of these genera, or it may even belong to a new East Asian genus. We thus denote U. gibberosus (Wang & Zheng, 1993) incertae sedis.
Paratettix tuberculata (Zheng & Jiang, 1997) was described within the genus Mishtshenkotetrix Harz, 1973 (Zheng & Jiang, 1997). The genus Mishtshenkotetrix Harz, 1973 was synonymized with the genus Paratettix Bolívar, 1887 by Devriese (1996) because the type specimens of M. brachyptera (Lucas & Brisout de Barneville, 1849) - the lectotype of the type species of the genus Mishtshenkotetrix was found to be a nymph of Paratettix meridionalis (Rambur, 1838). Then, M. tuberculata automatically became member of the genus Paratettix. However, this species does not fit the diagnosis of the genus Paratettix at all. Two main differential characters of the genus Paratettix are 1) vertex narrower than one of the compound eyes or equally wide, 2) the prozona of the pronotum very short and the median carina ends just before frontal margin of the pronotum. P. tuberculata has 1) the vertex significantly wider than one of the compound eyes (visible from fig. 1 from Zheng & Jiang, 1997) and 2) a relatively long prozona of the pronotum with uninterrupted, not obliterated median carina (visible from figs. 1, 2 from Zheng & Jiang, 1997). Thus, the species definitely does not belong to the genus Paratettix. The species has been suggested to be related to Tetrix transsylvanica comb. nov. by Zheng & Jiang (1997), what we cannot test, but since it is definitely not a member of Paratettix we propose new combination, Tetrix tuberculata comb. nov. It is clear that the species is more related to the genus Tetrix than to Paratettix, but its placement within the genus Tetrix is also uncertain (incertae sedis) and its taxonomic position needs to be reviewed in further studies.
description: Published as part of Skejo, Josip, Rebrina, Fran, Buzzetti, Filippo Maria, Ivković, Slobodan, Rašić, Alan & Tvrtković, Nikola, 2014, First records of Croatian and Serbian Tetrigidae (Orthoptera: Caelifera) with description of a new subspecies of Tetrix transsylvanica (Bazyluk & Kis, 1960), pp. 419-432 in Zootaxa 3856 (3) on pages 424-425, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3856.3.7, http://zenodo.org/record/224516