Fauna of India: Homoptera Membracidae

Altogether 169 species of membracidae were included by Distant (1908, 1915, 1916a-e) in his Fauna of British India including Ceylon and Burma and in Annals and Magazines of Natural History, followed by Funkhouser (1922, 1933, 1936b) who described another 13 species, making the total 182 distributed over 43 genera. The descriptions given by the above pioneers, though precise, left ut several characters of taxonomic value. The present work is the thoroughly revised and updated form of the erstwhile two volumes of the ‘Fauna of British India’ written in the year 1908 (vol. 4) and 1916 (vol. 6) by W.L. Distant. Between 1975 and 1985, 87 new species of Indian membracids were described by K.S. Ananthasubramanian, T.N. Ananthakrishnan and G. Thirumalai. Thus, the present work contains 231 species spread over 42 genera, including 7 new species. Besides taxonomic information, the present work also provides information on host association, ant-attendance, natural enemies, coloration and mimicry, parental care, and other related aspects of membracids. Only the species from the Indian subcontinent are included in the present work due to the difficulties experienced in examining the species from the adjacent countries, particularly Sri Lanka, Burma and Pakistan. Nevertheless, the membracid fauna of Pakistan and Bangladesh have been studied thoroughly by Dr. Imtiaz Ahmad and his co-workers in recent years.