Validation of the faunistic data on the genus Alebra Fieber, 1872 (Hemiptera, Cicadellidae) in the Iberian Peninsula and Madeira

• Autor(a) principal: Aguin-Pombo, D.
• Data de Publicação: 2002
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/3998
• topic: Hemiptera; Cicadellidae; Leafhoppers; Alebra; Iberian Peninsula; Madeira (Portugal); Distribution; Cigarrillas; Península Iberica; Distribución; .; Faculdade de Ciências da Vida

Identification of Alebra leafhoppers is difficult because most species do not show specific differences in male genital structures. Colour pattern and host plant associations, the characters traditionally used in the recognition of these species, show considerable intraspecific variation. In the last decade, it was proved that the shape of male abdominal apodemes is the most reliable morphological character to separate species of this genus, and since then, some species have been splitted in two. To untangling the systematics of the European species it urges to revise data on host plants and distribution. For the Iberian Peninsula the actual species number was still uncertain because the taxonomic value of apodemes in Alebra was unknown when the faunistic records on this region were published. In this work it was analysed material from Spain, Portugal and the island of Madeira and three species were identified: A. albostriella (Fallén, 1826), A. coryli Le Quesne, 1976, new to the Iberian peninsula, and A. viridis Rey, 1894 sensu Gillham 1991, recorded for the first time to the fauna of Madeira and Spain.