Liladownsia Woller & Fontana & Mariño-Pérez & Song 2014, gen. nov.
Creators: name: Woller, Derek A.
name: Fontana, Paolo
name: Mariño-Pérez, Ricardo
name: Song, Hojun
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Orthoptera
Baissogryllidae
Liladownsia

description: Liladownsia gen. nov. Fontana, Mariño-Pérez, Woller & Song
http://lsid.speciesfile.org/urn:lsid: Orthoptera.speciesfile.org:TaxonName:463900
Type species: Liladownsia fraile sp. nov. Fontana, Mariño-Pérez, Woller & Song, here designated. http://lsid.speciesfile.org/urn:lsid: Orthoptera.speciesfile.org:TaxonName:463901
General. Body stout; legs quite thin; bright colors with mixed combination of blackish-steel blue, red, yellow, and sometimes orange. Body surface heavily pubescent (Figs. 2A&B, 3A, and 4). Extremely peculiar pronotum shape with raised, swollen, and smooth prozona, and extremely rugose metazona. Sulcus very deep, lateral carinae absent (Figs. 2C and 3B). Tegmina brachypterous and tectiform, widely oval, densely-reticulated, covering 3/4 of male and 3/5 of female abdomen; overlapping partially on dorsum (Figs. 2A&B and 3A).
Etymology. We are pleased to name the new genus in honor of the Mexican singer-songwriter and Grammy Award-winner, Ana Lila Downs Sánchez, whose stage name is Lila Downs. This taxon is dedicated to her for a number of reasons, such as the fact that she was born in the vicinity of the type locality and because she incorporates several indigenous tongues from Mexico into her musical style, including Mixteco and Zapoteco (the latter of which is spoken in the type locality). Additionally, Lila Downs has not only promoted the vast cultural diversity of Mexico worldwide via her music, but also through the use of bright colors, a staple of Mexican culture, and considering that this new genus is brightly-colored, we would like to recognize her efforts through the dedication of this new genus.
Diagnosis and Taxonomic affinity. Aside from its brilliant coloration, the shape and proportions of the respective parts of the body in L. fraile identify it as a unique grasshopper, one that is quite squat, relatively heavy, and also slow-moving, akin, in many ways, to the members of Romaleidae. A closer examination reveals the originality of the shape of the pronotum (Figs. 2C and 3B) (especially in females (Fig. 3 B)) and the frailty of the hind femora (Figs. 2A&B and 3A), a feature probably related to the slow and ponderous movements of this organism. Despite its superficial resemblance to a romaleid, the primary exterior aspect that makes this taxon more similar to some Dactylotini genera, like Dactylotum and Perixerus, is the short, highly-reticulated tegmina (Figs. 2A&B and 3A). In the genus Dactylotum, however, reticulation of the tegmina only exists in two dimensions with light color veins on a dark background. In Perixerus, reticulation is in the form of actual raised veins, which are either darker or similar in color to the tegmina. The tegmina of L. fraile exhibit a strong similarity to those of Perixerus, but are longer and clearly tectiform (Figs. 2A&B and 3A).
Other morphological characters that liken L. fraile to Perixerus are the dense hairs that cover the entire body (Figs. 2A&B and 3A) and the general structure of the internal genitalia of the males of each species (Figs. 6 and 7). There are, however, clear differences in these internal structures, such as the apical valves of the penis being far more sclerotized in Liladownsia compared to Perixerus (Figs. 6 and 7A,C, & D). Also, the fact that the apical valves of the penis of Perixerus, in dorsal view, appear to emerge from a structure that is dilated and corrugated while, in Liladownsia, the general structure of the apical portion of the phallic complex appears to be more rounded and simple (Figs. 6B and 7A&D).
description: Published as part of Woller, Derek A., Fontana, Paolo, Mariño-Pérez, Ricardo & Song, Hojun, 2014, Studies in Mexican Grasshoppers: Liladownsia fraile, a new genus and species of Dactylotini (Acrididae: Melanoplinae) and an updated molecular phylogeny of Melanoplinae, pp. 475-495 in Zootaxa 3793 (4) on pages 478-484, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3793.4.6, http://zenodo.org/record/4914507