Stenopelmatidae

The family Stenopelmatidae is composed of large, mostly flightless insects resembling crickets (the family Gryllidae). The majority of species are in the New World (esp. the genera Ammopelmatus and Stenopelmatus), but the genera Oryctopus and Sia are Old World groups, each of which is placed in its own subfamily.

Stenopelmatidae
Stenopelmatus fuscus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Orthoptera
Suborder: Ensifera
Superfamily: Stenopelmatoidea
Family: Stenopelmatidae
Burmeister, 1838
Genera

see text

Classification

The classification and constituency of Stenopelmatidae is an ongoing source of controversy, with different authorities proposing radically different arrangements. Until recently, the majority of researchers appeared to accept a major New World lineage as the subfamily Stenopelmatinae, with smaller Old World lineages and fossil groups also treated as subfamilies.[1] At least one other authority, working exclusively with morphological characters, has instead repeatedly proposed that Stenopelmatidae contains the family Gryllacrididae as a subfamily, and also the entire superfamily Schizodactyloidea, similarly reduced to the rank of subfamily (e.g. [2]), a result explicitly rejected by other researchers.[1] In this morphological classification, the entire historical constituency of Stenopelmatidae is reduced to a single subfamily, with the former subfamilies all reduced to tribal rank.

As such, the majority of classifications have until recently recognized the following groups (with the genus Maxentius only removed from inclusion within the genus Sia in 2021):

  • Subfamily Oryctopinae Kevan, 1986
    • Tribe Oryctopini Kevan, 1986
  • Subfamily Siinae Gorochov, 1988
    • Genus Electrosia Gorochov, 2010
    • Genus Maxentius Stal, 1876
    • Genus Sia Giebel, 1861
  • Subfamily Stenopelmatinae Burmeister, 1838
  • Subfamily Zeuneropterinae Kevan & Wighton, 1983
    • Genus Zeuneroptera Sharov, 1962

References

  1. Vandergast, A.G., Weissman, D.B., Wood, D.A., Rentz, D.C., Bazelet, C.S., and Ueshima, N. (2017) Tackling an intractable problem: Can greater taxon sampling help resolve relationships within the Stenopelmatoidea (Orthoptera: Ensifera)? Zootaxa 4291, no. 1, p. 1. DOI:10.11646/zootaxa.4291.1.1
  2. Gorochov, A.V. (2020) The families Stenopelmatidae and Anostostomatidae (Orthoptera). 1. Higher classification, new and little known taxa. Entomologicheskoe Obozrenie 99: 905–961 (In Russian).


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