Bulletin de la Société entomologique de France, 112 (1), 2007 : 73-78.

On some Orthotylus s. str. Fieber, 1858, from the Basque Country (Hemiptera, Heteroptera, Miridae)

The genus Orthotylus, with hundreds of species described worldwide (SCHUH, 1995), is one of the most diverse genera among Miridae. Only in the Palaearctic Region, about 140 taxa (species and subspecies) have been recorded and arranged in 9 subgenera (KERZHNER & JosiFOV, 1999). Because the genus has never been revised on a world basis, there is no clear concept for it and the mentioned subgeneric arrangement is not usually adopted (or not in the same way) by extra-Palaearctic workers (SCHUH, 1995). Nevertheless, the practical usefulness of the Palaearctic subgenera (see, for example, EHANNO & MATOCQ, 1990) has to be emphasized, at least in the absence of any better agreement. According to Gessé & Goula (2004) there are 42 species into 7 subgenera recorded in the Iberian fauna.

Orthotylus s. str * is mainly Palaearctic, including 44 species with European, Asian or North African distribution and only one from Tropical Africa. In the Iberian Peninsula, 10 species were known until now.

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. On the one hand, some new and relevant faunistic data are reported concerning three species of the nominotypical subgenus of Orthotylus. On the other hand, several structures of the female genitalia are illustrated and commented for those three species and for a fourth one, in an attempt to resolve the practical problem of determining female specimens. This may be of particular interest for those taxa, such as the Iberian endemism O. (s. str.) siuranus Wagner, 1964, of which chorology needs to be thoroughly defined for conservation purposes.

Both subjects (faunistics and female genitalia) are developed below as independent sections, although they are intimately related. In fact, the latter is designed to help the former, as already argued.