A guide to Australian Pseudophyllinae

The Pseudophyllinae are some of Australia's most recognisable and unique katydids, and luckily for us they are usually fairly easy to identify. We have a total of 19-23 species (read on!) split between three very different tribes - Phrictini, Phyllomimini, and Simoderini. They're known from all along the east coast from Iron Range south to Victoria, although they're mostly restricted to rainforest and adjacent habitats (except for the genus Narea). So, how do we ID them?? It's a good question, and one which I will hopefully try to answer here. Let's go through tribe by tribe and see what we can come up with!

First up is the Australian endemic tribe Phrictini with its sole genus Phricta. Anyone who has been to the rainforests of north Queensland should know P. spinosa well, but we have a total of four described and one undescribed species of Phricta. They're split between three different rainforest regions, each of which has two different species. We'll start in the north and make our way southwards.

In the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland, we have two rather different species - P. spinosa and P. tortuwallina. P. spinosa is by far the most common species of the genus, and it is also the largest and probably the most distinctive. The most important features are the very short thorax spines that are only on the lateral margins (with small tubercles sometimes on hind margin as well), and the black and red patch on the inner surface of the hind femur. Have a look at these two shots:

Both features should be very obvious, but here's a closer look at the thorax spines so that you can make a comparision with the other species later:

Nymphs are similar to adults in most aspects (except wings) and will often sit splayed out on tree trunks like this (as will adults as well):

Very young nymphs don't look hugely like adults but they are still distinctive and there isn't much else like them. They don't have any large spines but the pattern is still similar:

As you can see, the black and red patch on the hind femur doesn't really develop properly until they have moulted a couple of times, which can make IDs difficult sometimes.

P. spinosa is very common across most of the Wet Tropics but it becomes less common as you get further south. It's known from the Daintree in the north down to about Paluma in the south, but there are only sporadic records south of Tully.

The other Wet Tropics species is P. tortuwallina, a very nice species with quite a restricted range. It's known from a few different localities on the Atherton Tablelands and is also quite common further north on Mount Lewis. It is significantly smaller than P. spinosa, it has very long thorax spines that often curve upwards and are present on the hind margin of the thorax as well as the lateral margins, and the inner surface of the hind femur has only a red patch without any black. It also often has more green tones than P. spinosa but that's not a particularly helpful feature until you've seen a lot of them. Here's a typical adult:

And here's a nymph showing the red patch:

Here's a better look at the thorax spines as well:

It's not exactly something we can use in most iNat sightings, but P. tortuwallina cannot call whereas P. spinosa can and does.

Through most of its range, it is sympatric with and less common than P. spinosa. In my experience you're lucky to get one P. tortuwallina in a night where you might see twenty or thirty P. spinosa. The exception to this is Mount Lewis, where P. tortuwallina is quite common (probably the most common katydid) and P. spinosa is apparently completely absent.

There is also a very old record of P. zwicka from Koolmoon Creek near Tully, but I am not sure of the validity of that. P. zwicka is very different to P. spinosa and there should not be any P. tortuwallina anywhere near there, so at least it should be obvious if we do get a sighting there. More on P. zwicka below.

So, heading south and the next rainforest area we reach is Eungella and Airlie Beach. Here we again have two species, neither of which are particularly common. P. zwicka is the more common of the two, and is known from the Eungella rainforests as well as more localities further south (and maybe north as we have seen). It's very similar in most respects to P. tortuwallina, and if you were to put them side by side I don't think I could distinguish them without a specimen. Here's a typical adult:

And here's a typical nymph:

We will get back to P. zwicka in a bit but for now we will move on.

The other species in the region is undescribed and I know very little about it. It is similar to P. spinosa in that it appears large and robust, but it's a little more spiny and it lacks red on the hind femur, instead having a large black patch on the inside surface:

The black markings on the pronotum also seem to be distinctive and are present on nymphs as well:

This species is only known from a few localities around Airlie Beach although it doesn't appear to be too rare. I really must take a trip down there and get some specimens!

Now we reach the two problem children as we travel further south to southeastern Queensland and northern NSW. Both P. zwicka and P. aberrans are found here, and for our purposes unfortunately they are essentially identical. We have already seen P. zwicka above, so here's P. aberrans:

And here's a nymph:

So, if they're identical, how do we tell them apart? Well, that's where it becomes problematic. There are differences in the important features like genitalia and the form of the stridulatory file and stridulatory vein, but these are generally not visible in any iNat sightings. I strongly suspect that P. aberrans calls whereas P. zwicka is silent which may be helpful at least. Otherwise though, we are restricted to using locality as our means of identification. As we have seen above with P. tortuwallina, Phricta species can be quite localised and I think it is reasonable to assume that specimens collected from the same locality are probably all the same species. Now we know this isn't always the case, and it's not a super accurate method of identifying species, but it's the best we've got. And if we all know that it's something of a guess, then I don't see any harm in making a guess for now. Hopefully in future we can look at more specimens and get a better feel for their distributions.

For now, here is a map of the distributions going by iNat sightings:

This is based on specimens used in Rentz, Su & Ueshima's (2005) revision of the genus. The full list of localities in this region for each species is:

P. zwicka: Amamoor, Montville, Tamborine Mountain, Canungra
P. aberrans: Mt Nebo, Burleigh Heads, Binna Burra, Terania Creek, Kyogle

Anything outside of these localities (or close to them) is probably not going to get an ID, although I have been assuming that anything north of the Sunshine Coast is P. zwicka and anything in NSW is P. aberrans.

If you want to help out with working out the differences between the two though, go find a male, splay out the wings, and get some good photos of the stridulatory region! Just try not to get bitten :P

Let's move on to the next tribe, the Phyllomimini, with the sole Australian genus Acauloplacella. These are probably our least common pseudophyllines which is a shame because they're among my favourites. They really are quite cool and luckily not too difficult to tell apart. We have four species in two subgenera known from the Wet Tropics and Iron Range of northern Queensland. Acauloplacella (Papuaprium) mecyna is known from Iron Range, Acauloplacella (Acauloplacella) hasenpuschae is known from the Wet Tropics, and Acauloplacella (Acauloplacella) incisa and Acauloplacella (Acauloplacella) queenslandica are known from both locatalities.

We'll start with A. mecyna because that is the easiest species to differentiate. In my experience it's also the most common species, although weirdly this is not reflected in iNat sightings as we have only a single observation. Why do we not have more?? It's endemic to Iron Range on Cape York Peninsula, but on both my trips to there it has been quite common, and in fact I reckon it was the most common non-phaneropterine katydids in the area. To be fair it seems mostly restricted to only a couple of plants (particularly Ficus opposita) but still. Go make more observations!

Anyway, A. mecyna is noticeably larger and more robust than the other species, and it usually has a couple of small to large brown spots on the tegmina:

It's very obviously different to the other species when you see it in person, but in photographs it can be a bit more difficult. The pinkish brown stripe down the centre of the pronotum and along the edges of the tegmina are a good feature to look for as well. Some other Acauloplacella species have a median stripe on the pronotum but it is always very pale white or cream.

At the very rear of the pronotum there is also an obscure pale and dark marking, which is mirrored on the other side. This is not present in any of the other species, but more importantly it's present in the male as a big white spot ringed in a thin black outline:

I am pretty sure that these spots are present on all Papuaprium males, and they seem to be at least partly present in the nymphs of both sexes as well, in the form of raised black marks:

The similar markings on the abdomen are also a good way to separate nymphs of this species from the other three.

Next we will look at A. hasenpuschae, which I reckon is probably the least common species. I have only seen it a handful of times and we only have one iNat record. It's restricted to the Wet Tropics but is the most southerly ranging species, and it's been found from Cairns down to near Townsville. Males are very easy to ID because they have two large brown tubercles on the pronotum:

Females don't have these tubercles but they do have moderate roughening of the pronotum here and you can vaguely see the similarity if you squint:

So how do you ID females then? The best thing to look at is the patterning on the wings. In A. hasenpuschae, vein M on the forewings (the most obvious long vein in the image below) is distinctly yellowish and is generally more obvious than any other vein or pseudovein on the forewings.

It's not always bright yellow but you should always be able to see it from a distance more clearly than any other lines on the forewing. Compare with the other lines on the forewings of the next two species below to see what I mean.

Nymphs of both sexes apparently have these tubercles, as shown by this subadult female:

These are actually probably the easiest species to identify as nymphs which is lucky for us.

The last two Acauloplacella are probably the most similar and although they are usually identifiable from photographs, you need to do a fairly close comparison to make sure you have the ID right.

A. queenslandica is the less common of the two, and is known from a variety of localities on the Atherton Tablelands and in the Daintree, as well as in Iron Range further up the cape. It's a fairly generic-looking species and at first glance it doesn't necessarily seem all that different to female A. hasenpuschae:

The key difference lies in the veins of the forewings. Notice how the major vein is prominent but not overly yellow, and from a distance it is not the most obvious line on the wings - instead there are yellow stripes further up the wing, which for the most part aren't actually veins at all. These yellow stripes aren't always present, but if they're missing then the veins around them will be at least a bit yellow, or sometimes there will be vertical yellow lines. Either way, there will be some yellowish stripes that are more prominent than that major vein. Once you notice these stripes, it should be easy enough to distinguish it from A. hasenpuschae. Both sexes are quite similar and I have no confirmed photos of nymphs so we will move on.

A. incisa is probably the most frequently-encountered species of Acauloplacella. It's not as abundant as A mecyna but it's much more widespread and is found through most of the lowlands of the central Wet Tropics, including in Cairns, so you can imagine that it would be the species that people come across the most often (it's also known from Iron Range). It's similar in size and colouration to A. queenslandica:

This one shows quite clearly how there can be vertical yellow stripes on the forewings sometimes. One fairly consistent difference can be seen better in this shot:

A. incisa often has a pale median stripe on the pronotum, which sometimes also extends onto the forewings as well. Most A. incisa have this and most A. queenslandica do not, but frustratingly this is not always the case. Alas! Incidentally, this picture also does a great job of showing how Acauloplacella can flatten their wings to cover their legs up, helping them to blend in even better and essentially completely removing any shadows that might give them away.

So then, what is the difference between A. incisa and A. queenslandica? The key is the shape of the forewings. In A. queenslandica, the forewings are a bit shorter and are broadly rounded at their ends, like in A. hasenpuschae. In A. incisa, however, the forewings are more elongate and are distinctly more pointed at the ends. This fantastic comparison should illustrate the differences perfectly:

In this diagram, A is A. queenslandica, B and C are A. hasenpuschae, D is A. incisa, and E is A. mecyna. You can very clearly see that A. incisa has a different forewing shape to the others (and that A. mecyna is larger and more robust than the others). This difference is very easy to see when you've got A. incisa and A. queenslandica side by side, but it's actually quite difficult to pick if you've just got one of them. So I would recommend comparing photographs afterwards rather than trying to decide which species you have in the field!

Again, both sexes are similar to each other, although it seems that males are less likely to have the median stripe extend onto the forewings than the females are.

I suspect that this is a nymph of A. incisa based on the pale median stripe, but it could also be A. queenslandica and it may be that we can't really tell the difference between these two species until they are adults:

So that about finishes up everything to say about Acauloplacella. Next we move to the most diverse group of Australian pseudophyllines, the Simoderini. We have four Australian genera found along most of the east coast of Australia from the Daintree down to Victoria, where they are our most southerly pseudophyllines, and in fact they're the most southerly pseudophyllines in the world except for a few South American species.

Our most distinctive species (and genus) is Tallebudgeroptera spininota, an unusual and uncommon species known from only a few localities in SEQ and northern NSW. They are easily distinguished from all other Australian Simoderini by the spines along the hind margin of the thorax:

As can be seen above, the sexes are similar but the male is a bit smaller and has more rounded forewings. Nothing is known about the nymphs but I expect that they would look similar (just without wings). There isn't really much more to say about this one because so little is known about it, so we shall move on.

Narea is an outlier in the entire Australian Pseudophyllinae both because of its southerly distribution and because of its habitat - it's the only genus not known from rainforest, and instead seems to be a genus of drier woodlands. They are uncommon but their numbers can apparently increase dramatically in some years. The most distinctive feature that unites all the species is a noticeable thickening of the antennae, especially at their base. Another good feature is that the spines along the sides of the thorax are not green - they're usually bright yellow or reddish brown, usually contrasting with the dorsal surface of the thorax (although some individuals have the entire thorax reddish brown). All of the remaining Simoderini have the thorax spines green except for Mastighaphoides vaginalis, which has them dull yellow with black tips. There are three described species of Narea but the true number of species is a little more confusing....

Of the described species, N. elongata is the easiest to distinguish - it has the tegmina pointed rather than round as in all other species:

N. elongata is known only from females, and is known from a small area in the vicinity of Sydney.

N. kungaree is probably the most widespread species of Narea and it's certainly the most common. It' for the most part similar to N. elongata, except the wings are rounded rather than pointed:

Males are similar to females but a bit smaller and darker:

And nymphs look basically how you would expect them to look:

N. kungaree is found from about Canberra to Melbourne and is our most southerly pseudophylline.

The last described species is N. compacta, which is pretty much just known from the original collection of a couple of males from Sydney. It's similar to N. kungaree but the tegmina are much more compact and rounded:

Virtually nothing is known about it as there have been no further specimens collected, but it's probably similar to the other species.

But hang on - N. elongata is only known from females, N. compacta is only known from males, and they're both known from the same region. Could they be one and the same? Well, normally I would have said no simply because the shape of the wings is so different between the two. But have a look at this photo:

Now that certainly looks like a female N. elongata and a male N. compacta to me. So it looks like they probably are the same species. But of course, more work is needed before we can say anything definitive.

So that's it for the named Narea, but as you may have suspected by now there is at least one undescribed species. It's quite a spectacular one but very rare. There is apparently a single specimen of it in the ANIC, and we have one iNat sighting of it:

The forewings are an interesting shape and the stripes on the pronotum also seem to be unique. So there should be no difficulty in IDing it at least. It's known from SEQ but might be more widespread, and pretty much nothing is known about it (as might be expected from something so rare).

We also have one additional sighting of note - this one from near Cooktown:

It's clearly a Narea going by the thickened antennal base (and the general 'feel' of it) but it's so far out of range from all of the others that it's surely undescribed. You Ning Su from ANIC suggested it might be the same as the undescribed species from SEQ, but it's just hard to say much more given that we have only a photograph of a nymph to go on. Hopefully some more will be found!

Alright, so finally we have the two genera Chloracantha and Mastighaphoides, which quite nicely follow a very similar pattern of distribution - both have one species in SEQ and three in FNQ. We'll start with Chloracantha.

The most distinctive species of Chloracantha is C. angularis, because it has a distinctly arched and pointed forewing:

They also usually have a number of small pale dots on the tegmina, and the pronotum has no patterning. Males are similar to females but much smaller, as is the case for all Chloracantha, and they have a pale brownish patch on the stridulatory region:

C. angularis seems to be a bit range-restricted and only occurs at higher elevations in FNQ. There are numerous scattered records from the Atherton Tablelands, and I've found that it's quite common on Mt Lewis.

C. lampra is by far the most common species of Chloracantha, and is essentially the 'lowland counterpart' of C. angularis. It's common around Cairns and at some times of year you can quite easily find a number of individuals in one area. It's overall similar to C. angularis with the most notable difference being the rounded tegmina:

But of course the more you look, the more differences you will see. C. lampra has a pale cream to yellow stripe on the bottom of the lateral lobes of the pronotum, it has small yellow spots on the tegmina, it's overall a more 'leaf green' rather than the bluish green of C. angularis, and it sometimes has large pale patches on the tegmina as well. The male also has a very obvious white spot on the stridulatory region, as opposed to the more diffuse brownish mark of C. angularis.

We also have some good photos of nymphs of C. lampra, which are structurally similar to adults (but without wings) but have slightly different colouring, with some pale spots on the abdomen:

I presume the nymphs of the other species are quite similar but we don't really have any images of them.

One thing that may not be obvious from these images is that male Chloracantha are tiny compared to some of their relatives (i.e. less than 2cm body length) - take a look at this one compared to my hand:

The single SEQ species of Chloracantha is C. hilleri, which is a little more robust than the other two species we have looked at so far. It's rather nondescript but as before, the more you look the more you see:

The pronotum usually has some paler stripes (similar to Narea), the tegmina often have a paler wash to their lower edge, and the main diagonal veins of the tegmina are also usually a bit paler and stand out against the background.

It's not always possible to see, but the abdomen is also bright yellow in most individuals:

C. hilleri is known from scattered records in SEQ from the Sunshine Coast down to about Byron Bay.

The least common Chloracantha is our final species, C. garradunga. It's quite similar in many respects to C. hilleri in many details of colour, but it's rather more elongate:

This female looks comparatively huge compared to other species in the genus too:

I've never seen this species in person but it does indeed seem that they are large - from measurements in the original description, the female C. garradunga is twice the length of the female C. angularis.

I don't have much else to say about C. garradunga because it's so uncommon, but it's known from a few localities from about Julatten down to near Innisfail.

And finally we reach our last genus, Mastighaphoides, which contains the largest of the Australian Simoderini. The species are all rather more similar to each other than the Chloracantha species are, but they're still relatively easy to distinguish.

The most distinctive species is M. vaginatus. Most obviously, the forewings are much broader and rounder than the other species (compare with the others below):

Less obvious but more helpful if you are dealing with nymphs is the form of the spines on the thorax. In M. vaginalis there are only a few large, robust spines along the edges of the thorax, and they are rather yellow with black tips:

These spines are quite obvious and in general as soon as a nymph is old enough to actually have thorax spines, it should be old enough to tell which species it is. The other three species have numerous very small green spines only.

M. vaginalis appears to be rather uncommon but is known from a number of different localities from the Daintree to a bit south of Cairns.

The least common Mastighaphoides, and indeed the most range-restricted of all of our Pseudophyllinae, is Mastighaphoides lewisensis. As its name suggests, it has only been collected on Mount Lewis near Julatten in FNQ. There aren't really many images of it, and even the specimen images don't really show a great difference between this and the next two species. It is rather smaller than the others, with the holotype male having a tegmen length of about 23mm and the paratype female having a tegmen length of 38mm (compared to >30mm and >42mm for males and females respectively of the other three species). However, the description is quite literally based on just these two specimens and there may be some variation.

Most useful I think will just be the distribution - the species is only known from Mount Lewis, and it's the only Mastighaphoides that has been collected from Mount Lewis. So if you're on Mount Lewis and you see a Mastighaphoides, you can be pretty sure you've got M. lewisensis.

So, is this nymph M. lewisensis?

Well, it was right at the top of Mount Lewis. Sooo.... yes, I would say it is. And that would make it the only live photograph of this species. I wish I had more to show you but alas! I'll have to do a few more trips.

The last two species are more similar than the others and it might be a bit more difficult to separate them from photographs alone. But luckily they have completely different distributions!

Mastighaphoides haffneri is the only southern species in the genus, and is known from numerous localities in SEQ and northern NSW. It's quite large and robust, and has rather rectangular forewings:

There is some variation in colour, and some individuals are quite yellow:

Males are similar to females but the stridulatory region is broad and pale:

And nymphs are about what you'd expect, although they are sometimes noticeably quite bluish, which can help distinguish them from Chloracantha hilleri:

M. haffneri is found over a broad distribution in SEQ and northern NSW, from about Gympie south past Port Macquarie.

Our final Simoderini and indeed our final Australian pseudophylline is the lovely Mastighaphoides tuberculatus. Other than the ubiquitous Phricta spinosa, M. tuberculatus is by far the most common pseudophylline in the Wet Tropics, and it's a relatively common sight in suburban gardens as well as undisturbed areas.

Overall it's very similar to M. haffneri but a little less rectangular:

Males are rounder again and like M. haffneri they have the stridulatory region at least partly pale:

The thorax spines are small and generally concolorous with the rest of the thorax, although sometimes they are quite yellow.

Once again, nymphs are pretty much as we would expect them to be, and as with M. haffneri they are sometimes quite bluish:

Younger nymphs of all Mastighaphoides species look like smaller versions of the second photo there, although generally without much in the way of spines.

M. tuberculatus is quite widely-distributed, and is known from virtually the entirety of the Wet Tropics from north of the Daintree south almost to Townsville. It's most common between Cape Tribulation and Innisfail though, and it appears to be very scarce south of Tully.

To cap off our Simoderini species, here are some fantastic wing comparisions of all of the Australian species, from Rentz, Su & Ueshima (2015) (note that they are not to scale):

A - male Chloracantha lampra; B - female Chloracantha lampra; C - male Chloracantha angularis; D - female Chloracantha angularis; E - male Chloracantha garradunga; F - female Chloracantha garradunga; G - male Chloracantha hilleri; H - female Chloracantha hilleri; I - male Narea kungaree; J - female Narea kungaree; K-L female Narea elongata; M - female Tallebudgeroptera spininota

A-B - male Mastighaphoides haffneri; C & E - female Mastighaphoides lewisensis; D - male Mastighaphoides lewisensis; F - male Mastighaphoides vaginalis; G - female Mastighaphoides vaginalis; H - male Mastighaphoides tuberculatus; I - female Mastighaphoides tuberculatus

And that brings us to the end of our species-by-species approach to the Australian Pseudophyllinae. There are still several things to discuss about the group as a whole though. The first thing to talk about is something that might seem obvious to somebody who hasn't seen much of this group before, and that's that they're really diverse in body form. I mean, does Phricta really look anything like Acauloplacella, considering the diversity of other katydids out there? In my eye, not really. The subfamily is united mostly on the basis of some subtle morphological traits. But recent molecular studies have suggested that indeed, these three groups are not closely related to each other. So in the near future, expect a bit of a shake-up to the katydid subfamilies that we know and love! For example, the results of this genetics paper suggest that the Phrictini are close to Segestidea, the Palm Katydid (in the subfamily Mecopodinae), that a group including the Pseudophyllini is sister to the Phaneropterinae, and that the Simoderini are a sister group to a big clade that includes Phaneropterinae, Mecopodinae, Phyllophorinae, and the remaining Pseudophyllinae. These are just the beginnings of this phylogenetic work and the groups may well shift around further, but for now it seems pretty certain that the Pseudophyllinae are not actually a natural grouping.

The distributions of these Australian species are also worth talking about a bit. Other than the genus Narea, the species are all restricted to rainforest, and so there are four 'geographic groups' that coincide with the four areas of tropical and subtropical rainforest on Australia's east coast. From north to south, these are:

Iron Range:

• Acauloplacella mecyna
• Acauloplacella queenslandica
• Acauloplacella incisa

Wet Tropics:

• Phricta spinosa
• Phricta tortuwallina
• Acauloplacella hasenpuschae
• Acauloplacella queenslandica
• Acauloplacella incisa
• Chloracantha lampra
• Chloracantha angularis
• Chloracantha garradunga
• Mastighaphoides vaginatus
• Mastighaphoides lewisensis
• Mastighaphoides tuberculatus

Eungella area:

• Phricta zwicka
• Phricta sp. nov.

SEQ and northern NSW:

• Phricta zwicka
• Phricta aberrans
• Tallebudgeroptera spininota
• Chloracantha hilleri
• Mastighaphoides haffneri

We can see that the Wet Tropics has the highest diversity by far, and that Iron Range and Eungella, being smaller areas of rainforest, have only a few species each. But why are there no Simoderini at Eungella? It's a good question, and maybe there are some Simoderini and we just haven't found them. Time to go looking!

We can put all of these distributions together in a nice and handy map, which may cause your computer some trouble to load but it looks nice I promise :P It unfortunately doesn't include the undescribed species, but that's just more incentive to get them named!

Of course, this wouldn't be a complete review without a big ole key. Sometimes it's very difficult to find good characters but I've done my best, so hopefully it's helpful. It includes the undescribed species as well, at least where we have some information on them (i.e. excluding the FNQ Narea).

And one last thing before we wrap up - which species do we have observations of on iNat, and which are we still missing? We're actually doing really well. Even including known undescribed species, we're only missing three species out of 23! That means we've observed 85% of the species here on iNat. The three we are missing are all described too, so we know where to look.

• Narea compacta - so as discussed above, maybe this species is actually a synonym of N. elongata, and maybe we actually already have a sighting of it guarding a female. But if we assume that they are in fact different, then we still don't have a sighting of this species. It does seem to be rather rare but it's known from a well-populated area, around Sydney, so hopefully it will turn up soon.
• Mastighaphoides lewisensis - as you saw above, I do actually have a photograph of this species, I just haven't had a chance to upload it yet because I am very behind. So yes, it will be coming. Soonish. Eventually. I promise. In the meantime though if anyone else wants to trek up Mount Lewis and see some, go ahead!
• Chloracantha garradunga - this is an interesting one because I wouldn't have expected it to be rare. It's supposed to be found through a lot of the Wet Tropics and yet it seems nobody has seen it. I've never seen it myself, and it's actually my last FNQ pseudophylline that I have not yet seen. The only people I know for sure who have seen it since it was described are David Rentz himself and @michaelmcmaster923. I will keep an eye out and hopefully if everyone else keeps uploading more photos we will get one soon.

And that finishes up our long and winding journey through the Australian Pseudophyllinae, or at least what is currently classified as Pseudophyllinae. They're some of our most stunning katydids and include some of our largest and most impressive species. They also provide a good opportunity to see if you can find all of the species local to you, because there aren't too many of them and they're fairly easy to identify. I'm hoping that this summary provides all the information you could possibly want on their distribution and identification, but of course if I've missed anything that's what comments are for. Another journal post coming very soon as well...

Posted on September 25, 2023 07:40 AM by matthew_connors