Tube Spittlebug

Description:

Cercopoidea; Machaerotidae; Machaerotinae. Wikipedia provides an extremely erudite description of the Machaerotidae, which is worth looking at, but this short extract establishes the specimen shown here to be in the Subfamily: Machaerotinae. "There are about 115 species in 31 genera placed in 4 tribes. The majority of species are found in Southeast Asia with a small number for Africa. They were traditionally separated into two subfamilies Machaerotinae which have the scutellar spine and Enderleiniinae which lack it. A third family, also lacking the spine, Apomachaerotinae, was introduced in 2014. The scutellum has a "tail" or appears raised towards the posterior end.

Habitat:

This Unidentified Machaerotinae was spotted in an overgrown grassy area between a rice field and a small provincial road. It was the only one that I could see there and that prompted me to check my records of other similar specimens. It appears from my notes that every time I have spotted this kind of "hopper", it has been a solitary specimen. So I take this to indicate that this creature is generally solitary in nature. I have never witnessed any gregarious behaviour.

Notes:

There used to be a website called "insectoid.info", a few years back, it closed down and is no longer accessible. However, my notes show that its Checklist for Machaerotidae in Luzon, Philippines included the following: Machaerota convexa Maa, 1963 Machaerota ensifera ->Machaerota esakii Machaerota esakii Kato, 1939 Machaerota fusca Baker, 1919 Machaerota luzonensis Schmidt, 1907 Machaerota philippinensis Baker, 1919 Machaerota virescens Maa, 1956 Pectinariophyes luzonensis Baker, 1927 Sierreia notabilis Baker, 1927