''Horvathinia'' is a small genus in the family

Belostomatidae Belostomatidae is a family of freshwater hemipteran insects known as giant water bugs or colloquially as toe-biters, Indian toe-biters, electric-light bugs, alligator ticks, or alligator fleas (in Florida). They are the largest insects in the or ...

, and the only genus in its subfamily. Though it was originally thought to contain eleven species, upon recent reexamination, the number of species was reduced to two. ''Horvathinia'' are incredibly rare and found only in a small part of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

in the border region of

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

and

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. Fewer than 100 specimens of the genus have been collected to date, always at lights at night. It remains unknown what their habits are, where they can be found in the water (though there is some evidence that they may lurk in the muck at the bottom of ponds), what their position in the

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spe ...

of the water bugs is, or whether they brood their eggs as all other giant water bugs do. Some of these questions are currently being addressed by Argentinian and American entomologists.

References

Nepomorpha genera Belostomatidae Arthropods of Argentina {{Nepomorpha-stub