On the Genus Felisacus Distant 
(Heteroptera; Miridae; Bryocorinae) 
T. E. Woodward^ 
The genus Felisacus Distant includes 16 
species of elongate, transparent winged bugs 
of the subfamily Bryocorinae, with a mainly 
tropical and subtropical distribution in the 
Western Pacific and Indian Ocean areas. Spe- 
cies are recorded from Madagascar, Sey- 
chelles, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Formosa, 
Philippines, Guam, Borneo, Java, Amboina, 
New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, 
and Samoa. In the course of this paper a 
division of the genus into two or possibly 
three species-groups or subgenera is dis- 
cussed. One of these groups is mainly north- 
ern Pacific in distribution (S.E. Oriental re- 
gion), the second mainly southern Pacific 
(apparently centred on the Australasian re- 
gion), while the third (and tentative) group 
borders mainly the Indian Ocean. 
The only host plants recorded for species 
of this genus are ferns, and all the evidence 
indicates a preference for and probable re- 
striction to ferns as food plants of these bugs. 
Extensive sweeping over a period of several 
years in New Zealand has yielded no speci- 
mens of F. elegantulus from any other plants 
but low-growing, bracken-like ferns, and then 
only in rather damp, stream-side localities 
shaded by trees, where a large series, including 
nymphs as well as adults, has been collected 
in a very limited area. This last preference 
may perhaps be correlated with a tropical 
origin of the genus in regions where the char- 
acteristic vegetation cover is rain-forest. The 
whole subfamily Bryocorinae, indeed, is dis- 
^ Department of Entomology, University of Queens- 
land, Brisbane, Australia. Manuscript received Novem- 
ber 6, 1952. 
tributed preponderantly, though not exclu- 
sively, in the wet tropics and is represented 
most strongly in Central and South America. 
The fern-frequenting habit of numbers of 
species belonging to other genera of Bryo- 
corinae is well known and probably applies 
also to a good proportion of the species for 
which no host records are yet available. The 
habit seems commonest in the tribe Bryo- 
corini, members of the tribes Odoniellini and 
Monaloniini apparently having a very divers- 
ified host range. By no means all Bryocorini 
are fern- dwellers, but the tribe as a whole does 
show an unusual preference for ferns, which 
seem from the records to be neglected by 
most other mirids. The Bryocorinae are gen- 
erally regarded as a morphologically rather 
primitive mirid group and, while the pref- 
erence of many of them for a relatively archaic 
group of plants may be coincidental, there is 
the possibility of its being a retained prefer- 
ence. This, of course, touches on highly hy- 
pothetical ground, but the host preference of 
insects is an interesting and fundamental, if 
still at present rather obscure, problem, and 
it seems to the writer that this case suggests 
some possibilities that are susceptible of test. 
Useful evidence might be accumulated by the 
identification, wherever possible, of the host 
plants of Felisacus and of other genera of 
Bryocorinae. It would be interesting, for ex- 
ample, to see whether there is any general 
phylogenetic correlation between the species 
and genera of Bryocorinae and the genera or 
families of plants on which they feed, or 
whether the preference for ferns, where it 
exists, extends no further than the nature of 
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