558 FAMILY XIX. — REDUVIIDjE. 



Texas and California. Uhler has also listed it from Para, 

 Brazil, and Walker (1873, 97) from Venezuela and Colombia. 

 From personal experience I long ago learned to pick up this 

 and allied species of Reduviids only with the forceps, as I have 

 on several occasions been severely punctured by their beak. 

 Smith (1910, 154) states that this and the next species made 

 a temporary stir in 1899 as "kissing bugs," because of a num- 

 ber of reported cases where bites had caused swelling of the lips. 

 "These species bite very readily and if, in flight, they strike 

 the face of an individual, they are very apt to puncture prompt- 

 ly. There is no doubt that some such cases did occur; there 

 is no doubt either that the majority of the reported cases were 

 attributable to altogether different causes." 



532 (746). Melanolestes abdominalis (Herrich-Schaeffer), 1843, 63. 



Form similar to picipes, but averaging smaller. Head, pronotum 

 and sterna black; scutellum, corium, antenna? and legs brown; membrane 

 darker brown; abdomen, except genital segment of male, red; tarsi dull 

 yellow. Structural characters as under generic heading. Length, 

 13—18 mm. 



Frequent in southern Indiana, April 1 — Dec. 18 ; not taken 

 north of Vigo County. Hibernates beneath partly buried logs 

 and at other seasons found in similar places as picipes. All of the 

 14 specimens at hand, eight of them females, are fully winged. 

 The general range of this species is about the same as that of 

 picipes, extending from New England west to South Dakota 

 and south to Mississippi, Texas, California and Mexico. Not as 

 yet recorded from Florida, though it probably occurs in the 

 northern portion of that State. 



There is some doubt about the status of M. abdominalis. Stal 

 (1872, 107) placed it as a color variety of picipes and it is so 

 regarded by Parshley (1918, 64) who states that he not only 

 has all gradations between the two forms, but a pair taken in 

 coitu, the male being picipes, the female, abdominalis. On the 

 other hand Uhler (1876, 330) regarded them as distinct, stat- 

 ing that "they sometimes occur under the same stone, but while 

 I have seen the sexes of each united, I have never seen a male 

 of the one caress or unite with a female of the other." The two 

 forms are treated as distinct both in the Van Duzee Catalogue 

 and the "Hemiptera of Connecticut" and as I have not, in all 

 my collecting, seen a specimen with intermediate hues, they 

 are here treated as separate species. 



