Bioacoustics of Anaphidna

Comments. The species of this genus exhibit considerable phenotypic plasticity, which makes their identification difficult. Individuals of the same species, or even of the same population, may show variation in characters that are otherwise stable and useful for the delimitation of species in other genera of the Dysoniini , like shape of the face, pronotal tubercles, structure of the stridulatory vein, wing venation, spines on the legs, and male cerci. Specimens of the same species would mistakenly be considered as belonging to more than one species, unless this variability is taken into account. On the other hand, sympatry of related species among Neotropical Phaneropterinae is common: According to observations made in the course of this investigation in the canopy of Amazon rainforest (canopy walkway in Amacayacu, SE Colombia ), it was found that two, three, and even more species of the same genus live together in the same area, and even on the same tree: Ceraia (with three species), Euceraia (four species), and Phylloptera (six species). Similar data were reported from lowland rainforest in northern Peru ( Nickle & Castner 1995 ) . According to the above, an overestimation of the variability in a few sympatric species of the genus Anaphidna could lead to considering them erroneously a single very variable species. Conversely, an underestimation of the variability could lead to the false assumption of more different species than are actually present. Another problem with the taxonomy of the genus is the presence of numerous closely related species in the same distributional range, and lacking significant differences in copulatory structures and other characters. This may be the result of recent adaptive radiation. To delimit the species, acoustic and ethological studies would be useful. The following key to species is based on characters with low range of variability.