Wrong again!

Another contributer has just sent me a nice photo that is clearly a nymph of Thionia acuta. It turns out that this genus - which always has adults that are gray to brown - has green nymphs with exactly the same paintbrush-like waxy filaments out the tail end. I have checked the literature and found a drawing of the nymph that shows the same rounded wing pads etc. (but of course no color or waxy tail; it is based on a dried specimen in a collection).

This particular species is more darkly marked and has a more pointed head than the only other Thionia in the eastern states, T. simplex.

That's cool, but what about the photo here which you point out as similar below. You wrote that you thought it might be Cedusa. They both sure do look very similar. How do you eliminate Flatid Planthopper as a possibility?

I have seen a paper on Cedusa nymphs, and one of them was photographed recently by Tom Murray. They are short, round, black bugs with wrinkled-looking heads.

Various contributers have turned in all the nymphs of the known northern Flatid genera (Anormenis, Metcalfa, Ormenoides), and none look like this one.