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Notes on the Aquatic Hemiptera. 
Under this head are treated those families of Hemiptera 
which have become adapted to an aquatic life. Like a number 
of families of the Coleoptera they not only rear their young 
in the water but continue to dwell therein during adult life. 
Family BELOSTOMATIDZ Leach 1815. 
A. TAXONOMY OF BELOSTOMATIDZ. 
Family Characteristics. Large, flat, brown bugs, with hind legs ciliated 
and flattened for swimming. They bear short, flat, strap-like appendages 
at tip of the abdomen. These are retractile. 
Ocelli are lacking. The antenne are hidden beneath the eyes, four- 
segmented, and the outer segments produced on one side. The tarsi are 
two-segmented. In the American forms, the fore tarsi bear but a single 
claw each, the other limbs two each. The fore legs are raptorial, the 
femora enlarged, and the tarsal segment broadly joined to the tibia. The 
middle and hind limbs are natatorial, the tibia and tarsi being somewhat 
flattened, and the hind limbs, especially, ciliated. The fore wings possess 
reticulated membranes. These large insects leave the water at dusk and 
are often noted at the electric lights, to which they are attracted. Thus 
their common name “electric-light bugs.”” They are also known as “giant 
water bugs.” 
Historical Review. To those of us who gained our names of water bugs 
from text books of a few years back, it was most vexing to learn that 
the nomenclature to which we had been exposed was wrong—so badly 
wrong that we were forced to learn that Zaitha was Belostoma, that 
there was no Zaitha, and that Belostoma was Lethocerus. We now have 
it straight. The genus Belostoma was created by Latreille, 1807, for a 
small Belostomatid. It was Amyot and Serville, 1843, who gave us the 
name Zaitha, which means “olive,” and which has’so generally been ap- 
plied to our small Belostomatids. The type they used, stolli, however, 
turned out to be Latreille’s testaceo pallidum. So we must forget Zaitha. 
Meyr, 1852, founded the genus Lethocerus for some large Belostomatid. 
These differ from Stal’s Benacus in possessing a grooved fore femur. 
Van Duzee lists four genera for America north of Mexico. They are 
Belostoma, Latr., Abedus Stal., Lethocerus Mayr, and Benacus Stal. 
They may be separated by the following key to genera. 
KEY TO GENERA. 
A. Mesothorax with a strong midventral keel, membrane of hemelytra 
reduced. A bedus. 
AA. Mesothorax without midventral keel. Membrane of hemelytra not 
reduced. 
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