Rhynchomitra and You!
These cute little green friends have been hopping up both into my yard and onto my iNat feed. Surprisingly, I was the first person to observe Rhynchomitra recurva, and I have been seeing them all over. I have noticed when people observe a member of the Rhynchomitra genus, they default to ID it as R. microrhina--probably because it was already in the iNat database. All the ones I have seen so far match R. recurva much better!
Instead of making comments explaining what seems to be the distinguishing feature (to me, a random internet person who is not a planthopper expert) on every observation page, it made more sense to write this thing, throw in the bugguide photos I have been linking to, but side-by-side where the different is hopefully a little more apparent.
How to tell these cuties apart? Check the snoot! Compare the width of the "horn" at the eye to its length.
There are three species listed on bugguide. R. lingula, R. recurva, and R. microrhina.
Photo Copyright © 2004 Tony DiTerlizzi
Rhynchomitra lingula Short snoot! Wider than long!
Photo Copyright © 2017 A. Hendrickson
Rhynchomitra recurva Medium snoot! About as wide as long!
Photo Copyright © 2010 Jon Hart
Rhynchomitra microrhina Loooong snoot! Longer than wide!
Both R. recurva and R. microrhina range within Texas (the bugguide page for R. lingula gives Louisiana as the easternmost range), and I will wager they are more common than you give them credit for. Also, those strange brown mystery nymphs you may have seen? These guys?
Photo Copyright © 2015 Robert Lord Zimlich
Rhynchomitra nymphs!
Comments
This is a great entry!
@gcwarbler
I hope I'm right about these. I based this entirely on photos I saw in bugguide, and even there I saw some possible misidentifications (based on leg color?). When in doubt, I classify based on body shape rather than coloration, because there can be so much variance in superficial characteristics.
Just came across a page discussing this very thing (using the width vs length of the snout to distinguish species):
http://canr.udel.edu/planthoppers/north-america/north-american-dictyopharidae/genus-rhynchomitra-fennah-1944/
Thank you for putting this together!
I put together some more specific comparison points from that image above. What to look for when making your ID:
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