The transmission of tungro disease of rice in the Philippines and of similar diseases in other countries by Nephotettix impicticeps Ishihara is now generally accepted. On the other hand, the transmission of the disease by N. apicalis (Motschulsky) has not yet been established, with contradictory results being reported in the literature. To help settle the problem, a taxonomic-transmission study was made and the results are presented in this paper. N. apicalis was found to be capable of transmitting the rice tungro virus. However, the percentage of active transmitters varied among the insects collected from different localities or even from the same locality. A higher percentage of positive transmission was obtained by testing the insects daily after an acquisition feeding for 5 days and after providing them with daily reacquisition feedings. The virus-vector interaction of N. apicalis did not differ fundamentally from that of N. impicticeps. The virus did not persist in the vector. However, N. apicalis was less able to transmit the tungro virus than N. impicticeps because the percentage of active transmitters, virus retention period, and number of disease-transmitting days of the former species were significantly lower than those of the latter. The morphological features of the active transmitters of N. apicalis such as location of tegminal spots, length of acdeagus, arrangement of teeth on aedeaglls, and number of teeth did not differ significantly from those of the nonactive transmitters.