PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Issued |Mr^\A,sl^l h ihc 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 

 Vol. 104 Washington : 1955 No. 3338 



REVISION OF THE VITTATE SPECIES OF THE 



CHRYSOMELID BEETLE GENUS DISONYCHA FROM THE 



AMERICAS SOUTH OF THE UNITED STATES 



By Doris Holmes Blake 



Introduction 



In an earlier revision of the chrysomelid beetles of the genus 

 Disonycha ^ the species that occurred north of Mexico were studied. 

 In that pubHcation the history as well as the characters of the genus 

 were discussed in detail. Therefore it seems unnecessary to repeat 

 this at such length here. 



The generic name Disonycha first appeared in the Dejean Catalogue 

 in 1837 with 31 species hsted under it. In 1844 Chevrolat ^ defined 

 the genus. The type of the genus was designated by the writer in 

 1933 as D. collata (Fabricius), a species with blue elytra, since it was 

 the most definitely described species included by Chevrolat in the 

 Catalogue. Many of the early species were described by Fabricius 

 under the genera Crioceris, Chrysomela, and Galleruca, but he later 

 referred them to Galleruca. Olivier placed them under Altica, which 

 name lUiger with Germanic emendation called Haltica. Melsheimer 

 was the first in America to use Chevrolat's name Disonycha. Most of 

 the Mexican and Central American species were described by Jacoby 

 in the Biologia Centrali-Americana, and he also described many 

 South American species. Very little has been done with the genus 



> Blake, Proe. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 82, art. 28, pp. 1-66, 1933. 



> Chevrolat, iu D'Orbigny, Dictionnaire universale d'histoire naturelle, vol. 5, p. 8, 1844. 



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