Molecular species delimitation of the Idioscopus clypealis species group (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae: Eurymelinae) reveals two new morphologically cryptic species from China

Abstract The Idioscopus clypealis species group includes the most important and widespread leafhopper pests of mango in the Asian and Australian regions. This group includes two previously described species that are very similar in their external and male genital morphology. To evaluate previous morphology-based species in this group we used DNA sequence data from three gene regions to conduct molecular species delimitation analyses using three common methods, jMOTU, ABGD and bPTP. Analyses of COI data alone and combined COI, 16S and 28S data recovered two well-supported clades comprised of I. clypealis and I. nagpurensis , and two additional clades representing two additional new species in this group. Idioscopus nagpurensis is newly recorded from China. Two new species are described and illustrated ( Idioscopus suprabasalis sp. nov. and I. poecilis sp. nov. ). A key to identifying males in this study is provided. Several COI sequences from samples identified as I. nagpurensis by our analysis are incorrectly identified as I. clypealis in the NCBI database.