Morphometric variations in the genus Chrotogonus Serville, 1838 (Orthoptera: Pyrgomorphidae) from Sindh, Pakistan

Document Type : Research articles

Authors

• Samiullah Soomro
• Riffat Sultana

Department of Zoology, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Sindh-Pakistan

10.22067/ijab.2021.63432.0

Abstract

We studied inter and intra-specific morphometrical variability across six species/subspecies of Chrotogonus Serville, 1838 (Orthoptera: Pyrgomorphidae) consisting on Chrotogonus homalodemus homalodemus (Blanchard, 1836), C. homalodemus (Blanchard, 1836), C. trachypterus trachypterus (Blanchard, 1836), C. trachypterus robertsi Kirby, 1914, C. trachypterus (Blanchard, 1836), and C. turanicus Kuthy, 1905 from Sindh, Pakistan. The investigation was based on a comparative study of external morphological measurements of the six major body parts including: Antennal segments, length of head, length of pronotum, length of tegmina, length of wings, and total body length. Interspecific morphometric variation showed highest variation as 16.00 ± 04.33mm in the length of tegmina of C. homalodemus and lowest variation 01.98 ± 00.05mm in length of pronotum of C. trachypterus robertsi while intraspecific morphometric variation amongst females was highest than males. The species of Chrotogonus are closely similar and no satisfactory field characters exist by which may be distinguished. This study will fill the specific identification gap amongst this taxon.

Keywords

• Chrotogonus
• interspecific
• intraspecific
• variations
• dimorphism

Main Subjects

• Morphology
• Taxonomy

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