Phylogenetic placement and taxonomy of the Neotropical sharpshooter genus Desamera Young, with description of its sister group, Ciccamera gen. nov. (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae: Cicadellinae).

The genus Desamera Young is reviewed, including its diagnosis, redescription of D. intersecta (Germar), description of three new species (D. manauara sp. nov. and D. viridimaculata sp. nov. from Brazil, and D. youngi sp. nov. from Brazil and Peru), and a key to males of all six known species. A phylogenetic analysis with 12 terminal taxa, based on 65 morphological (head, thorax, male and female genitalia) and colour pattern characters, yielded four most parsimonious trees. The monophyly of Desamera was recovered in all the trees with high support indices. In addition, the analysis recovered a non-monophyletic Ciccus Latreille, a genus previously hypothesized to be closely related to Desamera. Ciccus viridivitta (Walker) appeared closer to Ciccamera hamata gen. et sp. nov. than to the type-species of Ciccus, C. adspersus (Fabricius). Thus, Ciccus viridivitta was transferred to Ciccamera, which was recovered as the sister group of Desamera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]