From Puerto Rico: Hemiptera or Diptera?
Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 7:32 AM
I thought this would be a bug, but upon looking at it more closely I believe I see alteres. Perhaps a sort of fly? It would perch on leaves and stay immobile for long periods of time. Photographed during the day, Caribbean National Forest, Puerto Rico.
Alejandro Sanchez
Lowland rain forest, Luquillo Mountains, eastern Puerto Rico
Hello Alejandro,
We believe this is a fly in the order Diptera, but we are uncertain beyond that. We will check with Eric Eaton to see if he is able to provide additional information. We would not entirely rule out that this is a Hemipteran, because although the image appears to indicate halteres, the knobbed, thread-like, hind wing organs of flies, our ancient volume of Comstock’s An Introduction to Entomology states on page 59: “The hind wings of the males of the family Coccidae are also threadlike.”
Correction: From Eric Eaton
Monday, January 26, 2009
Ok, the “fly” is some kind of hemipteran, probably a fulgoroid hopper, but in the tropics there are entire families not seen in North America….
Eric
Update: Tuesday January 27, 2009
Hi Daniel:
The web site Fulgoromorpha Lists on The Web (FLOW) lists only seven fulgoroid species for Puerto Rico, in two families (Achilidae and Cixiidae) and five genera. I was not able to locate images of any of the listed species, but based on related species it looks like it is probably a Cixiid (Bothriocera bicornis, Cubana tortriciformis or Oliarus cingalensis). It looks quite similar to the Bothriocera images on Bugguide. Regards.
Karl
Links: http://flow.snv.jussieu.fr/cgi-bin/flowexplorer.pl?lang= en&page=country&id=40
i have a very very similar bug in my room right now, i have just photographed it and trying to work out how to upload…
i am in the Kimberly region of Australia.
are we supposed to have these strange little things here??