The Emesinae, or thread-legged bugs, are a subfamily of the

Reduviidae The Reduviidae are a large cosmopolitan family of the order Hemiptera (true bugs). Among the Hemiptera and together with the Nabidae almost all species are terrestrial ambush predators: most other predatory Hemiptera are aquatic. The main exampl ...

(i.e., assassin bugs). They are conspicuously different from the other reduviids by their very slender body form. They are stalking, predatory

insects 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 pairs of j ...

that can be collected on palm fronds, cliffs, spider webbing, or near lights at night (many can be collected by

blacklight A blacklight, also called a UV-A light, Wood's lamp, or ultraviolet light, is a lamp that emits long-wave (UV-A) ultraviolet light and very little visible light. One type of lamp has a violet filter material, either on the bulb or in a separat ...

). They walk on their mid and hind legs; the front pair is

raptorial The term ''raptorial'' implies much the same as ''predatory'' but most often refers to modifications of an arthropod's foreleg that make it function for the grasping of prey while it is consumed, where the gripping surfaces are formed from the o ...

. Some groups specialize on spiders. Very little is known about emesines except that many species are found in the

tropics The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

. Pedro Wygodzinsky wrote the most recent revision of this group.

Biogeography

The Emesinae are

cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Food and drink * Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo" History * Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953 Hotels and resorts * Cosmopoli ...

in distribution; however, they are most abundant in the tropics. For example, the tribe Metapterini, while having a worldwide distribution, has the majority of its diversity confined to

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

islands. The center of emesine diversity is apparently

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 ...

. This continent contains the only species of the most

plesiomorphic In phylogenetics, a plesiomorphy ("near form") and symplesiomorphy are synonyms for an ancestral character shared by all members of a clade, which does not distinguish the clade from other clades. Plesiomorphy, symplesiomorphy, apomorphy, and ...

tribe, the

Collartidini The Collartidini is a tribe of thread-legged bugs restricted to Africa, Sri Lanka and Taiwan. Wygodzinsky (1966) proposed that this group is the sister group of the remaining Emesinae The Emesinae, or thread-legged bugs, are a subfamily of the ...

, while a more derived tribe, the Deliastini, is restricted to

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 southe ...

. About 90 genera and 900 species have been described in the Emesinae.Maldonado Capriles, J. (1990) Systematic Catalogue of the Reduviidae of the World (Insecta: Heteroptera). Caribbean Journal of Sciences, Special Edition, i–x, 1–694.

Systematics

The first cladistic analysis of the Reduviidae (assassin bugs) based on molecular data (mitochondrial and nuclear ribosomal DNA) was published in 2009. This analysis suggested that the Emesinae are not

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

. The analysis sampled only seven specimens of Emesinae, though five of the six currently recognized tribes were included. The analysis suggested that the Emesinae are

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of converg ...

with respect to the

Saicinae Saicinae is a subfamily of the family Reduviidae, or the assassin bugs.Gil-Santana, H. R., Gouveia, F. B. P., & Zeraik, S. O. "''Tagalis evavilmae'' sp. nov. (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Reduviidae: Saicinae), an inhabitant of birds' nests in Amazona ...

and Visayanocorinae. Additionally, the Emesini and

Ploiariolini Ploiariolini is a tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English language, English is in the discipline of anthropology. This de ...

were not supported as monophyletic groups. The taxonomy of the group is thus in doubt.

References

External links

Don't let the web bugs bite
at Earthling Nature. *http://bugguide.net/node/view/213/bgpage {{Taxonbar, from=Q5371032 Reduviidae Hemiptera subfamilies