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Is anyone able to answer a query about Psylloidea please? I caught one recently in North Wales, UK, by beating ash trees. Using the 1979 Royal Entomological Society key by Hodkinson & White, I've got it to either Psyllopsis fraxini or distinguenda, but there then seems to be a mismatch between the figures and the text. My specimen fits figs 97, 98 and 99, which the captions and key say is fraxini. But the text of the key says if the proctiger has the maximum breadth in the basal third, as mine has and fig. 97 shows, it is distinguenda. What species do figs 97 and 98 really depict, please?

The wing pattern of mine fits fig 86 in that it doesn't have the extra lobe in the apical dark mark. Has this any significance?

John Bratton

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Peter Kirby was able to answer it:

"Nearly all the splodgy-winged Psyllopsis I've ever looked at, like yours, match figs 97, 98 and 99 in the key, so I assume these are fraxini, as the figure legends suggest and as the text describing it as common supports, and that the trouble is that in the first sentence of the key couplet the phrases "in basal third" and "at approximately mid-height" have been transposed. Accompanying females have certainly always matched the fraxini illustration. I was once going to follow this up and seek additional literature, but lost interest before doing so. The putative fraxini I've looked at include both the wing patterns illustrated, intermediates, and more extreme examples beyond both."