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Since February, 1930, the Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, P. R., has been engaged in collecting and shipping mole-cricket parasites, with the purpose of establishing them in Puerto Rico, to aid in the control of the Puerto Rican mole-cricket or “changa,” Scapteriscus vicinus Scudder. At the beginning of the work, Dr. George N. Wolcott traveled in various countries, such as Trinidad, Haiti, the Guianas, Venezuela and Brazil. Except in Brazil these searches were unsuccessful, because Larra americana Sauss., was not present at all or not in sufficient quantities to make shipments of value. Later on, the author was sent to Belem, Para, Brazil, to collect there during the month of January-February, 1938. Taking as a basis the previous experiences in shipping parasites from Brazil and by including live parasitized mole-crickets with the wasps, exceptionally good results were obtained. Dr. Wolcott returned to Brazil during May-June, 1938, and even better success was obtained as the methods were further perfected.

Much more careful collecting and rearing needs to be done in this group before anything nearly complete can be presented for this area. The primary object of this paper is to lay a basis for the future by summarizing our limited knowledge of the psylliids of Puerto Rico and their relationship to the rest of the neotropical fauna. Other than accidental or incidental records there has been no effort to determine the fauna of the Caribbean region with the possible exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico. The recent records contained herein were acquired incidental to a survey by Caldwell and Martorell relative to bunchy-top disease of papaya, (Carica papaya). More nearly complete data from this survey for the auchenorhynchus Homoptera have been submitted for publication elsewhere.