Herrera Distant 1905

Genus Herrera Distant, 1905 Herrera Distant 1905b: 486. Type species. Cicada marginella Walker 1858a: 21. (Orizaba, Vera Cruz, Mexico) Remarks. Distant (1905b) distinguished species of Herrera as those cicadas with a head that is about as wide as the mesonotum, a vertex that is longer than the frons, a pronotum that is about as long as the mesonotum, an abdomen that is about as long as the distance from the apex of the postclypeus to the posterior of the cruciform elevation, male with small opercula, fore femora with distinct spines, and a fore wing width that is slightly more than half the fore wing length. The ratio of fore wing width to length can be as little as one-third in some species and the opercula can cover the tympanal cavity in some species as these characters have become more variable with the addition of more species to the genus. The diversity of the genus was more than doubled recently with the addition of multiple new species and the reassignment of several other species to the genus (Sanborn 2019a; 2019b). Distribution. The range of the species of the genus was restricted to Central America until Sanborn & Heath (2014) described new species from Argentina. The range has been expanded recently to include Bolivia, Brazil, French Guiana, and Peru (Sanborn 2019a; 2019b). Species of the genus now have been recorded from Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru (Metcalf 1963b; Sanborn 2013, 2014, 2019a; 2019b; Sanborn & Heath 2014). The record here is the first reported for Venezuela and continues to fill gaps in the known distribution of the genus.Published as part of SANBORN, ALLEN F, 2020, Eight new species and three new records of Neotropical cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) from Venezuela, pp. 6-37 in Journal of Insect Biodiversity 16 (1) on page 31, DOI: 10.12976/jib/2020.16.1.2, http://zenodo.org/record/837642