Tropentag, September 10 - 12, 2025, Bonn "Reconciling land system changes with planetary health"

Tetrigidae of Ethiopia: First DNA barcoding and description of three new species

¹Natural History Museum Karlsruhe, Dept. of Entomology, Orthopteran Section, Germany
²Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Natural Sciences, Belgium
³University of Zagreb, Dept. of Biology, Croatia
⁴Ruđer Bošković Institute, Division of Molecular Biology, Croatia
⁵Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, Zoology, Ethiopia
⁶International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), Ethiopia
⁷International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), Division of Molecular Biology, Kenya

Abstract

Tetrigidae is a caeliferan family of Orthoptera constituting a diverse and relatively ancient lineage of small Orthopterans, which have their highest diversity in tropical and subtropical areas. However, so far no studies have been conducted on the identification and description of Tetrigidae species in Ethiopia and even less molecular data is available. Hence, we performed the first DNA barcoding study of species belonging to the genera Paratettix, Leptacrydium, Dasyleurotettix, and Morphopoides from Ethiopia. We provide 35 new sequences of the COI gene belonging to six species of these genera. We show that Ethiopian Tetrigidae can be successfully identified using DNA barcodes, even in cryptic genera such as Paratettix: species delimitation based on this gene was strongly congruent with the morphological assignments. We report three species Dasyleurotettix infaustus (Walker, 1871), Morphopoides tessmanni Günther, 1939 and M. folipes (Hancock, 1908) from Ethiopia for the first time. In addition, we describe three new species, which are confirmed both with morphological and genetic data: Paratettix tanai sp. nov., Paratettix geminus sp. nov. and Leptacrydium naqamteensis sp. nov. Paratettix macrostenus is considered a new synonym of P. subpustulatus. Backed with the morphological differences we observed the high value of integrative taxonomy for understudied cryptic species groups. Further, we demonstrate the high value of barcodes and show that our new species represent independent genetic units. However, further research should include more material from diverse regions and a more comprehensive taxon sampling using multiple genes including nuclear genes to understand the diversity of Tetrigidae across Africa has to be conducted. Moreover, their distribution and ecological significance should be explored.

Keywords: African, afrotropical, biodiversity, grasshopper, new records, Paratettix

Contact Address: Tarekegn Fite, Natural History Museum Karlsruhe, Dept. of Entomology, Orthopteran Section, Kriegsstr. 216a, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany, e-mail: tfduressagmail.com