Tetraneura nigriabdominalis

Tetraneura nigriabdominalis of many authors nec. Sasaki, incl. Hille Ris Lambers, 1970 = Tetraneura fusiformis Matsumura

Hille Ris Lambers (1970) established that there were two species among samples of the “Rice Root Aphid” studied by Tanaka (1961) in Japan, but he unfortunately assigned the name nigriabdominalis to the wrong species, resulting in ongoing nomenclatural confusion. All African records of T. nigriabdominalis as well as many of those from Asia (Blackman & Eastop 2000) should be referred to T. fusiformis, although past pest outbreaks on upland rice in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere in E Asia, were of the true nigriabdominalis (Akimoto, pers. comm.). Hille Ris Lambers (1970, as T. nigriabdominalis) distinguished several root­feeding populations on the basis of abdominal chaetotaxy, and erected a subspecies, bispina (which becomes T. fusiformis ssp. bispina, new combination), for his material from Africa and N America. However, this subspecies name cannot be usefully employed, as most of the African material in the BMNH collection does not conform to bispina, and there may be other clonal populations distributed around the world.