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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Hemiptera |
Minute Bugs.
Salient features of adults. Terrestrial (?).
Predacious (on small arthropods, such as booklice, springtails and aphids). Tiny; 0.5–2.4 mm long (‘less than 2.5 mm’); fliers, or non-fliers; emitting repugnatorial liquid as a defence reaction (?); relatively stout bodied; conspicuously stilt-legged to not stilt-legged. Head non-linear. Rostrum clearly separated ventrally from the prosternum by a sclerotized gula; 4 segmented. Antennae longer than the head, readily visible from above; 4 segmented; non-aristate. Ocelli present, or absent (when brachypterous). Scutellum relatively small. Fore-wings well developed (males), or conspicuous, but much shorter than the abdomen (females, which lack the hemelytral membrane); when macropterous, differentiated into a basally thickened and a distally membranous region; of the macropters, with a costal fracture and cuneus. Tarsi 2 segmented; two-clawed. Claws all apical. Pulvilli absent (?). The abdomen without ventral silvery pubescence.
Hemelytra not punctured, pronotum not keeled.
Taxonomy. Suborder Heteroptera; Cimicoidea.
British representation. 7 species in Britain; genera 2. Loricula, Myrmedobia.
Illustrations. • Myrmedobia, Loricula (Southwood & Leston). • Alleotomus, Deraecoris, Bryocoris, Monalocoris (Southwood & Leston). • Loricula and Myrmedobia, with Cimicidae: Saunders, 1892.. CIMICIDAE. 1, Brachysteles parvicornis. 2, Cardiastethus fasciiventris. 3, Dufouriellus ater. MICROPHYSIDAE. 4 and 5, Loricula pselaphiformis, male and female respectively. 6 and 7, Loricula elegantula, male and female respectively. 8, Myrmedobia tenella, male. 9 and 10, Myrmedobia coleoptrata, male and female respectively. From Saunders (1892).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Hemiptera. Version: 27th July 2019. delta-intkey.com’.
