14 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 243 



Records show that pyrioides was first introduced into Europe from Japan and 

 then later into North America either from Europe or Japan, or perhaps 

 both. Through the transportation of nursery stock, pyrioides has also 

 gained entrance into Morocco, South Africa, and Australia. 



Stephanitis takeyai Drake and Maa (pi. 48) is a Japanese indigene rather 

 recently imported into eastern United States, apparently on nursery stock 

 from Japan. It is known from Connecticut and New Jersey in the United 

 States. 



Galeatus spinifrons (Fallen) (pi. 44), originally described from Sweden, is 

 indigenous in many countries in Europe and Asia. It was the first lacebug 

 accidentally transported into North America (probably New England or 

 Newfoundland) from Europe. The synonymity of G. angusticollis Reuter 

 and G. spinifrons (Fallen) of Europe and of G. peckhami (Ashmead) and G. 

 uhleri Horvath of the United States and Canada gives the survivor spinifrons 

 circumglobal distribution. It is the only tingid species that has encircled 

 the world in distribution. In Europe and Asia, both macropterous and 

 brachypterous forms are fairly common, whereas an examination of more 

 than 500 specimens (all long-winged) from northern United States and 

 southern Canada, indicates that perhaps only the homozygous, macrop- 

 terous form was probably imported into northern United States. Galeatus 

 is an Old World genus, and G. spinifrons is pterygopolymorphic in Eurasia. 



Founded on morphologic structures from a global concept, Drake 

 and Davis (1960) proposed the superfamily Miroidea Hahn to hold the 

 families Tingidae Laporte and Miridae Hahn, and then systematized the 

 Tingidae into the subfamilies Cantacaderinae Stal, Tinginae Laporte, and 

 Vianaidinae Kormilev. In consummating these hierarchic changes, the 

 subfamily Agrammatinae Douglas and Scott (formerly Serenthinae 

 Stal) was suppressed as a synonym of Tinginae and the rank of the family 

 Vianaididae Kormilev was lowered to that of subfamily and then, along 

 with its generic taxa in totality, transferred to the Tingidae. The super- 

 family Miroidea falls in the higher hierarchial Cimicomorpha (Leston et 

 al. 1954). 



For almost a century, catalogs, synopses, textbooks, and other publi- 

 cations had either treated the Piesmatidae as a subfamily of Tingidae (Stal 

 1874, Horvath 1906) or as a separate family. Reuter (1912, pp. 49, 56) 

 classified the Piesmatidae and Tingidae together in the superfamily Tingi- 

 toidea. Recently, Leston et al. (1954) and Drake and Davis (1958, 1960) 

 have clearly shown that these two families are not so closely related to each 

 other and that they belong to different familial groups, the Piesmatidae to the 

 Pentamorpha and the Tingidae, as stated above, to the Cimicomorpha. 

 Among the structural differences between these families, it should be noted 

 that the Piesmatidae (genus Piesma, ventral sterna V, VI) possess tricho- 

 bothria on the underside of the abdomen, whereas trichobothrial hairs are 

 lacking in the Tingidae. 



