Mantophasmatodea: A New Insect Order with Extant Members in the Afrotropics

Klass, Klaus-D.
Zompro, Oliver
Kristensen, Niels P.
Adis, Joachim

¹Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. ²Max-Planck-Institut für Limnologie, AG Tropenökologie, August-Thienemann-Strasse 2, D-24306 Plön, Germany. ³Staatliche Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden, Museum für Tierkunde, Königsbrücker Landstrasse 159, A.B. Meyer Bau, D-01109 Dresden, Germany.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Supporting Online Material: www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1069397/DC1; SOM text; References

27 December 2001; accepted 10 April 2002

Published online 18 April 2002; 10.1126/science.1069397

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Science 296(5572):p 1456-1459, May 24, 2002.

A new insect order, Mantophasmatodea, is described on the basis of museum specimens of a new genus with two species: Mantophasma zephyra gen. et sp. nov. (one female from Namibia) and M. subsolana sp. nov. (one male from Tanzania). This is the first time since 1914 that a newly described extant insect taxon has proved unplaceable within a recognized order. Mantophasmatodeans are apterous carnivores. Their closest phylogenetic relationships may be to Grylloblattodea (ice-crawlers) and/or Phasmatodea (stick insects), but the morphological evidence is ambiguous. Raptophasma Zompro from Baltic amber is assigned to the Mantophasmatodea, revealing a wider previous range for the lineage.