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Flatid Planthopper
Unidentified Flatinae
15.4561, 119.922
Field Notes
Description:
This is a Planthopper from the family Flatidae. According to Wikipedia, there are two subfamilies - Flatinae and Flatoidinae. Wiki describes the Flatinae as being "flattened laterally with tent-like tegmina", whereas the Flatoidinae are decribed as being "not laterally compressed and sometimes the tegmina are held horizontally".- paraphrased from Wikipedia.
Habitat:
This Flatid Planthopper was spotted in our backyard on the leaf of a Mango Tree (Mangifera indica Linn.) locally known as Mangang-kalabau.Plant information from - http://www.stuartxchange.org/Mangga.html
Notes:
The white substance, which can be seen in my photos, does not seem to have a name. It is a kind of wax produced by the nymphs of this kind of hopper. This is what I had to say about the white wax, in a previous spotting of a nymph - https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/2083420830... Planthopper Nymphs secrete a white substance while they are eating. It covers the nymphs and the surrounding plant surfaces with a coating of white material which appears to have no name. This is tremendously disadvantageous and causes lengthy descriptions when writing about the lifestyle of planthoppers. One example is "covered by a thick, fluffy, white, waxy secretion' quote from http://cues.cfans.umn.edu/old/Web/187Pla...... I thought of using "cera alba", Latin for "white wax", but it is problematic. Firstly it is two words when one would be better. Secondly, "cera alba" has been used for hundreds of years for "beeswax'. So, how about if it were shortened to "ceralba". That, I think, would be much more convenient. New words are invented all the time - just a few decades ago there was no such word as "Hippie", but we all know it now. It just takes someone to invent it :-)
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