Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
Clickable Guide
Moths Butterflies Flies Caterpillars Flies Dragonflies Flies Mantids Cockroaches Bees and Wasps Walkingsticks Earwigs Ants Termites Hoppers and Kin Hoppers and Kin Beetles True Bugs Fleas Grasshoppers and Kin Ticks Spiders Scorpions Centipedes Millipedes

Calendar

TaxonomyBrowseInfoImagesLinksBooksData
Photo#1207007
Ceanothus Psyllid - Ceanothia bicolor

Ceanothus Psyllid - Ceanothia bicolor
Santa Barbara County, California, USA
March 24, 2016
Size: ~2mm
Found on buckbrush (Ceanothus cuneatus) in ridge line mixed bishop pine coastal scrub habitat; matured from nymphs in folded leaves; black color is accurate

Images of this individual: tag all
Ceanothus Psyllid - Ceanothia bicolor Ceanothus Psyllid - Ceanothia bicolor

Moved
Moved from Ceanothia.

C. bicolor, male
A sexually dimorphic species, with females much lighter. This female:

shares some similarities with C. boharti, but the silhouette of the female genitalia in this pic on flickr (being careful to account for the the darkened apices of the hindwings) suggests that the most parsimonious answer is true, and that it is also C. bicolor, though I say this with less confidence. Both bicolor and boharti occur on Ceanothus cuneatus, and the life history of bicolor is indeed as you have observed, with the nymphs inducing leaf-folding and producing copious wax. The life history of boharti is unknown, but should not be assumed to be the same: nymphs of one Ceanothia spp., for example, feed on the branches below ground near the region of root-attachment. Jensen also notes that he, like you, found these on the same plants as E. minuta, and noted that adults emerged in large numbers in late May.

Moved

I finally understand these now
Unhappy with some noticeable differences between this psyllid and your other E. fuscipennis images, I decided to exhaustively review all of the Euglyptoneura images you've uploaded to flickr while comparing key characters to Heslop-Harrison's original descriptions of the genus. My initial observation was that most specimens in the series were fairly consistent among characters, except for the two reared from leaf-folding nymphs; those psyllids seemed to differ slightly in the wing venation, wing maculation, the appearance of the genal cones, and some other difficult-to-quantify characters. Once I started comparing the pterostigma of each, I finally made a breakthrough:

Euglyptoneura, while appearing to have a pterostigma from afar, is defined as actually lacking one as it lacks an associated costal nodal break. The presence of the costal nodal break is what seperates Ceanothia from Euglyptoneura. As your images are such a high quality, I was easily able to review the pterostigmatic area in all of your Euglyptoneura and what I found is that while most of them lack a costal nodal break and are therefore correctly placed, both of the psyllids reared from leaf-folding nymphs actually did have this trait. Therefore, both this psyllid as well as this one:

actually belong to the elusive genus Ceanothia, which turned out to be under our nose the whole time.

Using two of your psyllids, I did a quick graphic to illustrate this feature (I also point out the cubito-medial petiole, which is a more variable character but it's often a very useful way to spot Euglyptoneura). Click to enlarge:

Knowing this, we shouldn't have any trouble distinguishing these anymore.

As to which species these both belong, this one appears to be a male C. bicolor, and I would reason that the female is the same species (the adult males are much darker overall than the females). The nymphs do indeed induce leaf-folding on Ceanothus cuneatus. The most similar species is C. boharti; I will compare the two later and hopefully get a definitive name.

Thanks for your patience - only took about a month to sort these out! I believe that makes this 5 Ceanothus species that you've photographed so far - quite impressive!

 
E. minuta
That being the case, I'm not convinced that I have E. fuscipennis. I was trying to go through my images and sort them out and I couldn't find any differences between the E. minuta I just photographed and the non-Ceanothia that I photographed back in March. I don't think I have it posted on bugguide (yet), but from that batch I think I'm seeing the long ovipositor in https://www.flickr.com/photos/44150996@N06/25992462166/in/dateposted/, but it's also possible that both were mixed and I lack the eye/expertise can't separate them.

Currently, I'm not seeing any adult Ceanothia and all the Euglyptonrura I'm seeing have the red tinge with varying degrees of opacity to the wings. Every female I've gotten a look at has had the long ovipositor.

There are lot of folded leaves containing small nymphs, these nymphs look like the larger ones I photographed in March, but are producing much more copious amounts of fluff in their chambers.

 
They certainly do seem to grade into each other
And unfortunately the genitalia seems to be the most reliable way to distinguish them, which is problematic for the ones with opaque wings. While it's nice to have an understanding of the two genera, understanding the species involved seems to be much more complicated, especially as there appear to be few differences between the two species other than the genitalia. All available keys use the wing color and opacity thereof as a distinguishing factor, but this seems unreliable at best since your images seem to suggest that the color and opacity of the wings darkens as the insect matures.

 
Lucky shot
I got a lucky shot of a male: the other day, but it won't help with the March series :-/

 
If only they were all that cooperative!
At the very least we can say that all of the minuta are in the right place. I remain hopeful that we'll be able to figure out the "fuscipennis" as well, even if not immediately.

And thanks again for all the work you've done in documenting these - I feel like we've made great strides in understanding the California psyllid fauna, which is by far the most diverse and complex group of North American psyllids. We now have photos for nearly all of the native CA genera.

Moved tentatively
Moved from Euglyptoneura.

 
Other Ceanothus...
The area I've been going to pretty much only has C. cuneatus, but it's a convenient after work stop. I'll see if I can get to some sites where C. impressus is dominant as leaves are closer structurally to C. papillosus which the paper posted on your site lists as the confirmed host for E. fuscipennis (this species is pretty uncommon by me). Maybe there's some difference in host preference?

 
Worth a shot!
I don't know much about Ceanothus systematics, but the two appear to be closely related and so I wouldn't be surprised if you did find psyllids on C. impressus that also use C. papillosus. Many early collections on Ceanothus just recorded the plant to genus, so many of the host lists for the Ceanothus psyllids are undoubtedly incomplete. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but for a fairly up-to-date list of host plants of psyllids in CA, Percy Rung & Hoddle's 2012 checklist is fairly good (pdf available here). From that list, it's also worth noting that six species have been recorded from C. cunatus: in addition to E. minuta, N. rugipennis, and C. bicolor which you've photographed, there are 3 other spp. of Ceanothia, but no other Euglyptoneura or Nyctiphalerus have been recorded. Perhaps it's true, and all of the Euglyptoneura you've found on the plant are indeed minuta ... in which case, I wonder what fuscipennis looks like?

 
Not sure if it'll help...
I posted the rest of the March Euglyptoneura contingent I captured. If there are any other external features that aren't clear, let me know, I might have another image with it in focus.

 
After reviewing this series
I would agree with you - I think they are all E. minuta, including the one currently sitting under E. fuscipennis. I see no discernible differences between the members of this series other than color and wing opacity, and although this is the character used in Crawford and Tuthill's keys, I think it is incorrect to separate these species based on this alone as color is often a very unreliable ID character in psyllids.

Based on what else is known of the species, I would expect true E. fuscipennis to be even darker, have broader wings in comparison to the rather elongate wings of E. minuta, have a larger cubital cell in relation to the medial cell, and have a smaller pterostigma.

 
Me too...
That's kind of where I wound up sorting my photos earlier this week, the only ones that looked distinctly different were those that wound up being Ceanothia bicolor. I'm excited to see if I can turn anything up on the Ceanothus impressus :-)

 
Ceanothus impressus
I found a psyllid on the Ceanothus impressus, but I'm not sure what it is...

Comment viewing options
Select your preferred way to display the comments and click 'Save settings' to activate your changes.