Costa Rican Dictyopharid Planthopper

bugman

April 9th, 2006 at 12:00 am

Categories

Aphids, Scale Insects, Leafhoppers, and Tree Hoppers

Patridge Scalop of some kind?
I recently returned from the Costa Rica and, as you can imagine, found quite a few interesting things to take pictures of. This one in particular I’m not finding much information on. The closest I can come up with is a Partidge Scalop of some kind. This was taken during a tour of an organic farm in the Osa Peninsula.
Thanks,
Todd

Hi Todd,
We tried looking up this creature using both spellings of your alleged common name, but neither search lead us anywhere. Spellings “partridge” and “scallop” were very broad and led us to many restaurants. Please provide us with the link you found. We believe this is some type of fly in the order Diptera, but your photo indicates the possibility of a second set of wings which would render our guess incorrect. We are asking Eric Eaton for an opinion. Eric quickly came to our rescue with this identification: ” I see how anyone could be confounded by that critter! It is a dictyopharid planthopper (family Dictyopharidae if my spelling is correct). They occur in North America, too, but obviously the tropical ones are way more spectacular:-) Oh, the order is Hemiptera (Homoptera no longer exists as a stand-alone order). Eric”