An Annotated List of Auchenorrhyncha and Heteroptera Collected in the Coastal Salt Marshes of the Mississippi Delta in Louisiana

Received Sep 21, 2017; Revised Nov 6, 2017; Accepted Nov 26, 2017

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1. Introduction

Louisiana’s coastal marshes are experiencing the highest rate of wetland loss in the US [1] mainly due to sea level rise and dynamic geomorphology, but also due to natural and human-induced disasters [2, 3]. Through the previous and 2017 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, marsh restoration is ongoing to combat human-caused and natural land loss. As a consequence of the rising concern over loss of habitat, there is a focus on counteracting that loss via restoration and achieving a sustainable ecosystem within the coastal Louisiana. Furthermore, there is a strong need for adequate and accurate assessment of natural processes in fragile and valuable Louisiana wetlands [4, 5]. Such studies are not only critical in designing effective reserve systems for potential ecosystem restoration, but also necessary in many conservation and ecological studies [6, 7]. Together with annelids, mollusks, and crustaceans, terrestrial arthropods are critical ecosystem components due to their high diversity and sensitivity to perturbations [8]. Within Louisiana coastal ecosystems, terrestrial arthropods represent a major component of multicellular biodiversity with dominating roles of representatives of Hemiptera and Diptera [9]. However, cataloged and published data on arthropod fauna of the coastal Louisiana salt marshes are still scarce and hard to find. Information on the arthropod representatives of this ecosystem is scattered across many literature sources and is practically hidden from research.

During the years 2011–2013 thousands of insects were collected by the Hooper-Bùi research team (LSU, Baton Rouge) as a part of a project dedicated to assessing the ecological impact of hurricanes and oil spill contamination on salt marsh ecosystems in the Mississippi Delta. This paper presents the result of taxonomic treatment of the collected representatives of Auchenorrhyncha and Heteroptera, main suborders of the order Hemiptera. This is...