Rice Grasshoppers of the Genus Hieroglyphus and their Nearest Allies

Extract

Species of the genus Hieroglyphus are well known in India as serious pests of rice, sugar-cane, Sorghum, and some other crops, but in nearly all economic entomological publications one species only, H. banian, F. (= furcifer, Serv.) is regarded as being noxious. It is obvious, however, from some of the earlier descriptions and figures that there is more than one injurious species, but the exact status of each one of them could not be established even in more recent economic publications owing to the very unsatisfactory state of the systematics of this group, which made correct identification of species uncertain even for a specialist and quite impossible for an economic entomologist. It is true that comparatively recently I. Bolivar (1912) and J. Carl (1916) published more or less comprehensive papers on the genus, but these papers are not revisions, as the authors did not include all the known species and hardly touched questions of synonymy; moreover, Carl's paper, though published four years after that of Bolivar, was written without any reference to the latter, which resulted in the same species being described twice under different names, thus increasing the confusion. Further, both these authors based their papers on insufficiently extensive material, so that they were unable to appreciate the range of variation in the species.