The Pectinariophyes problem: A morphological examination of an apparent polyphyletic genus

Pectinariophyes (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha: Cercopoidea) is a small genus of Machaerotidae, the spittlebug family known for their nymphal habit of constructing calcareous tubes in which they develop. The ten described species of Pectinariophyes present a unique situation within the family; three species occur in Africa and the remaining seven are Indomalayan and Australian, with no evidence of their ranges ever being convergent. The recent molecular phylogeny of the Machaerotidae (Bell et al., 2014) presented a hypothesis positing that the African members of Pectinariophyes are placed in a lineage with other African machaerotids, separate from their Australian congenerics. Here, we discuss morphological evidence supporting this molecular data based hypothesis.