Are the recently described fossil Mole Crickets of Myanmar amber real gryllotalpids? (Orthoptera: Gryllotalpidae & Gryllidae).

We report five new Myanmar amber specimens attributable to "Mole Cricket" †Pherodactylus rectanguli n. comb., hitherto regarded as a Mole Cricket (Orthoptera: Grylloptalpidae). The new material includes two adult males, two adult females, and one nymph. The specimens are redescribed, and additional new characters are provided for their delimitation and corresponding species identification. We carry out a comparison between these new specimens with other taxa of mole crickets from Myanmar amber and extant true crickets. The result indicates that some species merely represent different nymphal development stages or adults of †Pherodactylus rectanguli n. comb., however, they were misidentified as different species. We also treated genera †Tresdigitus n. syn. and †Chunxiania n. syn. as synonyms of genus †Pherodactylus Poinar, Su & Brown, 2020, and treat †Tresdigitus gracilis Jiang, Xu, Jarzembowski & Xiao, 2022 n. syn. and †Chunxiania fania n. syn. as synonyms of †Pherodactylus rectanguli n. comb. †Burmagryllotalpa longa is valid, because its shape of the pronotum curved without lateral carinae. The morphological convergences and specializations of subterranean dwelling species are discussed. The robust fore tibia and long apical spurs of †P. micromorphus, †P. rectanguli n. comb. and †B. longa are insufficient evidence for an assignment to the family Gryllotalpidae. Instead, we suggest place them into the subfamily Gryllinae (Gryllidae), tribe Sclerogryllini, and group them into their own subtribe Pherodactylina n. subtr.. A key to the identification of recent and fossil Sclerogryllini is also provided. Their taxonomy and morphology are discussed.

Citation

Oscar J Cadena-Castañeda, Yi-Jiao Liu, Zhe-Yuan Yu, Tian-Hao Hu, Shi-Yang Wu, Zhu-Qing He. Are the recently described fossil Mole Crickets of Myanmar amber real gryllotalpids? (Orthoptera: Gryllotalpidae & Gryllidae). Zootaxa. 2023 Jun 28;5311(1):48-64

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PMID: 37518656

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