Trachyaretaon Rehn & Rehn, 1939

Genus Trachyaretaon Rehn & Rehn, 1939 View in CoL

Differentiation. – Distinguished from Aretaon Rehn & Rehn, 1939 by the presence of inter-posterior pronotal spines and anterior mesal metanotalspines as wellas indistinctanterior mesonotals.Moreover, the vertex is notably more convex and conical in Trachyaretaon and the genus is notrepresented in Borneo.The eggs readily differ from those of Aretaon by having the anterior end of the micropylar plate narrow and rounded ( Fig. 74 C-Q), broadened, roundly angular and idented in Aretaon ). From Sungaya Zompro, 1996 the genus is very difficult to separate based on the morphology of the insects and can basically only be distinguished by the stockier habitus and on average more strongly developed body armature of both sexes, ♂ having the mesothorax <2.5x longer than the prothorax and ♀ having the mesothorax much more trapezoidal in shape with the posterior portion>2x wider than the anterior margin. Moreover, ♀ of Trachyaretaon have the ovipositor ± up-curved whereas it is rather straight in lateral aspect in Sungaya . The most obvious distinctive feature however is represented by the morphology of the eggs, which are simple and barrel-shaped in Trachyaretaon ( Fig. 74 C-Q), whereas eggs of Sungaya are basically lemon-shaped and rather resemble those of Obrimus in having the anterior portion of the capsule with a distinctconstriction and the polar-area with an obtusely conical protrusion (bi-gibbose with a transverse indention in Obrimus ).

Remarks. – Originally described as a subgenus of Aretaon, Zompro (2004) raised Trachyaretaon to generic rank, which was supported by molecular data ( Bank et al., 2021), which also revealed Trachyaretaon as the sister-taxon of Sungaya ( Bank et al., 2021) . The numerous citations of Trachyaretaon may be referred to in the Phasmida Species File (http:// Phasmida .SpeciesFile.org).

The actual diversity of this genus is not yet known. There are further possibly new species on the islands of Leyte, Samar, Mindoro and perhaps even Mindanao that are represented by single specimens in the authors collection and the collection of RBINS. However, these