Diversity of Treehoppers (Hemiptera: Membracidae) from the Jawadhu Hills, Tirupathur District, Tamil Nadu, India

This study provides a wide-ranging list of Treehoppers species (Hemiptera: Membracidae) from the Thirupathur district of Tamil Nadu in India. The main aim of the study was to assess the diversity and abundance of Treehoppers across a range of ecosystems, including agricultural landscapes and forest ecosystem. Samples have been collected in several plants from various habitats across the hills using hand‑picking, insect nets, and Winkler‑type sampling, and preserved in 70% ethyl alcohol. in this ecosystem. A total of 20 species is recorded, all belonging to the subfamily Centrotinae, distributed across four tribes (Boccharini, Gargarini, Leptocentrini, and Oxyrhacini). The assemblage is dominated by the tribes Gargarini (3 genera, 6 species) and Oxyrhacini (1 genus, 6 species), each contributing three‑fifths of the total species‑richness. The checklist includes several regionally distributed taxa such as Leptocentrus taurus, Oxyrhachis tarandus, and Gargara madrasensis, as well as relatively restricted or endemic species such as Lanceonotus mukkaliensis and G. madrasensis, underscoring the Jawadhu Hills as a Centrotinae micro‑hotspot within the Eastern Ghats. The findings provide the first systematic inventory of Membracidae for this region Prabakaran et al. (2017)., highlight the importance of the Jawadhu Hills for treehopper conservation, and call for future studies on host‑plant associations, seasonal abundance, and phenology to refine our understanding of membracid diversity in the Eastern Ghats.