Piesmatidae is a small

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

true bugs Hemiptera (; ) is an order (biology), order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising over 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, Reduviidae, assassin bugs, Cimex, bed bugs, and shield bugs. ...

, commonly called ash-grey leaf bugs. The Piesmatidae are distributed mostly in the

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...

Northern Hemisphere, with some occurring in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, Australia and

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 ...

. A common species found throughout the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

is '' Piesma cinereum''. (2007): An Unusual, Primitive Piesmatidae (Insecta: Heteroptera) in Cretaceous Amber from Myanmar (Burma). ''American Museum Novitates'' 3611: 1-17.
PDF fulltext
/ref> Ash-grey leaf bugs are small

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s, some 2–4 mm overall. The head,

thorax The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...

and the firm part of the wings are extensively dimpled. This resembles the similar pattern of the

Tingidae The Tingidae are a family of very small () insects in the order Hemiptera that are commonly referred to as lace bugs. This group is distributed worldwide with about 2,000 described species. They are called lace bugs because the pronotum and f ...

of the

infraorder Order ( la, ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and ...

Cimicomorpha The Cimicomorpha are an infraorder of insects in the order Hemiptera, the true bugs. The rostrum and other morphology of all members apparently is adapted to feeding on animals as their prey or hosts. Members include bed bugs, bat bugs, ass ...

, and was initially taken to signify a close relationship. It is due to

convergent evolution Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last com ...

however. They feed on

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...

sap, mostly of

Chenopodiaceae Amaranthaceae is a family of flowering plants commonly known as the amaranth family, in reference to its type genus '' Amaranthus''. It includes the former goosefoot family Chenopodiaceae and contains about 165 genera and 2,040 species, making i ...

and

Caryophyllaceae Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranthaceae, Cactacea ...

. '' Piesma linnavouri'' have been found on '' Acacia'' ( Fabaceae). '' Mcateella'' have been found on many host plants but mostly ''Acacia'' and '' Proteaceae''. The host plants of '' Miespa'' remain unknown.

Taxonomy

Three subfamilies and eleven genera belong to the family Piesmatidae:

Piesmatinae

* '' Afropiesma'' * † '' Eopiesma''

Oise amber Oise ( ; ; pcd, Oése) is a department in the north of France. It is named after the river Oise. Inhabitants of the department are called ''Oisiens'' () or ''Isariens'', after the Latin name for the river, Isara. It had a population of 829,419 ...

, France,

Ypresian In the geologic timescale the Ypresian is the oldest age or lowest stratigraphic stage of the Eocene. It spans the time between , is preceded by the Thanetian Age (part of the Paleocene) and is followed by the Eocene Lutetian Age. The Ypresian ...

* † '' Heissiana''

Baltic amber The Baltic region is home to the largest known deposit of amber, called Baltic amber or succinite. It was produced sometime during the Eocene epoch, but exactly when is controversial. It has been estimated that these forests created more than ...

Rovno amber Rivne amber, occasionally called Ukrainian amber, is amber found in the Rivne Oblast and surrounding regions of Ukraine and Belarus. The amber is dated between Late Eocene and Early Miocene, and suggested to be contemporaneous to Baltic amber. ...

, Eocene * '' Mcateella'' * '' Miespa'' * '' Parapiesma'' * '' Piesma''

Psamminae

* '' Psammium'' * '' Saxicoris'' * '' Sympeplus'' ;Thaicorniae *'' Thaicoris'' Many species were formerly in the

type genus In biological taxonomy, the type genus is the genus which defines a biological family and the root of the family name. Zoological nomenclature According to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, "The name-bearing type of a nominal ...

'' Piesma'', from which the subgenera '' Afropiesma'' and '' Parapiesma'' were split off into separate genera. The genus '' Thaicoris'' was for some time placed in this family, but it has more recently been suggested that it is a member of the Thaumastocoridae. There are two

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

genera. '' Eopiesma'' from the earliest Eocene (about 55 mya) is still a very basal member of the family. '' Heissiana'', found in

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages * Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...

amber Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In ...

from the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " ...

might be a northern relative of '' Mcateella'' and '' Miespa'' but given its distribution it might more comfortably be considered closely related to the ancestor of ''Eopiesma''. From 2007 to 2009 '' Cretopiesma'' was placed within the family. '' Cretopiesma'' was found in mid-

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

amber from

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

and lived about 100 mya (

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago) ...

) and was initially considered to be a primitive piesmatid but this has since been rejected. The closest relatives of the Piesmatidae remain rather insufficiently determined. After the ash-grey leaf bugs were recognized as Pentatomomorpha, they were most often placed in the

Lygaeoidea The Lygaeoidea are a sizeable Taxonomic rank, superfamily of true bugs, containing seed bugs and allies, in the order Hemiptera. There are about 16 families and more than 4,600 described species in Lygaeoidea, found worldwide. Most feed on seeds ...

based on

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

analysis, with their relatives variously presumed to be the Berytidae,

Colobathristidae Colobathristidae is a family of true bug Hemiptera (; ) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising over 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shiel ...

and

Malcidae Malcidae is a family of true bug Hemiptera (; ) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising over 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. ...

, or the peculiar,

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

-like Psamminae, a subfamily of the

Lygaeidae The Lygaeidae are a family in the Hemiptera (true bugs), with more than 110 genera in four subfamilies. The family is commonly referred to as seed bugs, and less commonly, milkweed bugs, or ground bugs. However, while many of the species feed on ...

. For some time, the Psamminae were even included in the Piesmatidae. Alternatively, the ash-grey leaf bugs were considered Pentatomomorpha ''

incertae sedis ' () or ''problematica'' is a term used for a taxonomic group where its broader relationships are unknown or undefined. Alternatively, such groups are frequently referred to as "enigmatic taxa". In the system of open nomenclature, uncertain ...

'' or placed in a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

superfamily Piesmatoidea with the discovery of ''Cretopiesma''. However a cladistic analysis rejected ''Cretopiesma'' from Piesmatidae and placed the genus in the family

Aradidae Aradidae is a family of flat bugs, and a member of true bugs (Heteroptera). The common name for these insects refers to their dorsoventrally flattened bodies. With few exceptions, these cryptic insects are of no economic importance. This famil ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1950799 * Heteroptera families