Mayacephalus Cadena-Castañeda & Monzón-Sierra & Cortés-Torres 2016, n. gen.
Creators: name: Cadena-Castañeda, Oscar J.
name: Monzón-Sierra, José
name: Cortés-Torres, Carolina
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2016
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Orthoptera
Tettigoniidae
Mayacephalus

description: Mayacephalus n. gen.
Diagnosis. Fastigium of vertex elongated, slender and horizontally directed, dorsally with lateral furrows with tubercles. Eyes small and rounded, located in the inferior and lateral part of antennal cavities. Lateral lobes of pronotum with humeral sinus moderately pronounced. Both sexes brachypterous, males with tegmina covering first segment and females the second, posterior wings vestigial. Tenth tergite not modified, male cerci divided, with dorsal branch flattened and ventral one thin, not flat. Ovipositor longer than body, slender, without serrations.
Type species. Mayacephalus dickmanorum n. sp., described below.
Etymology. The first part of the name of this genus is for the Mayan culture that inhabits southern Mexico and northern Central America. The second part of the name – cephalus is common in various names of genera in the Conocephalinae subfamily.
Comparison. This new genus is similar to Toledopizia Chamorro-Rengifo & Braun, 2010, Copiphora Serville, 1831 and Daedalellus Uvarov, 1940. The similarity with Toledopizia and Daedalellus is for its brachypterous condition; from the first genus it can be distinguished by the shape of the pronotum, and that in the new genus the humeral sinus is visible, pronotal disc with well developed furrows, external genicular lobules from anterior and medial femora unarmed; Toledopizia with pronotal furrows and humeral sinus not developed, all genicular lobes are armed; male of Toledopizia salesopolensis (Piza, 1980) is not known so that comparison is not possible.
Mayacephalus n. gen., differs from Daedalellus by having head and fastigium extraordinarily elongated (fastigium five or six times as long as antennal scape), pronotum three times longer than wide, metazona covering stridulatory area, male cerci branches asymmetrical, cerci dorso-ventrally divided, dorsal branch wide and flattened. Daedalellus with head and fastigium moderately elongate (fastigium less than three times antennal scape length), pronotum 1.5 times as long as wide, not covering stridulatory area, branches of male cercus slender, similarly shaped and divided in the latero-internal margin of cercus.
The proposed new genus can be distinguished from Copiphora mainly by the development of the wings, Mayacephalus n. gen., is brachypterous and Copiphora is macropterous. The shape of the fastigium in the new genus is similar in shape to Copiphora azteca Saussure & Pictet, 1898, C. gracilis Scudder, 1869 and C. longicauda Serville, 1831. Mesotibiae dorsally armed with spines in Copiphora, unarmed dorsally in Mayacephalus.
description: Published as part of Cadena-Castañeda, Oscar J., Monzón-Sierra, José & Cortés-Torres, Carolina, 2016, Studies in Guatemalan Ensifera: Mayacephalus (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) a new cone-headed katydid genus, pp. 293-300 in Zootaxa 4084 (2) on page 294, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4084.2.9, http://zenodo.org/record/1054019