One name, three forms

Three males of Toxodera hauseri Roy, 2009 from my collection: Mt Trus Madi in Sabah (Borneo), Mt Halimun in West Java and the Lojing Highlands in Kelantan (Peninsular Malaysia). All three key out to hauseri in Roy's 2009 revision of the Toxoderini. One of them, to my eye, looks like something else.

Roy described the species from a male holotype taken at Taiping, Perak, with a type series of males only from West Malaysia, southern Thailand and East Java. In his key it parts from T. fimbriata on the mid and hind femora: broad leaf-like lobes with short teeth, almost uniformly dark brown, and an apical prolongation more than twice as long as the lateral ones.

The Borneo and Lojing males are not identical — one rustier with narrower, ribbed lobes, the other darker with broad kite-shaped lobes — but they are built on the same plan. The Lojing male, from the locality closest to Taiping, fits Roy's description almost word for word. Between those two I can accept geographic variation.

The West Java male is another matter. Its femoral lobes are drawn out along the femur, the margin notched and cut into deep irregular lobules, mottled rust and black; the tegmina carry discrete dark spots and the body is slenderer and banded. And Java is already in Roy's type series, through a paratype from Mt Gumitir in East Java. So either Roy's Javan male looks like mine and his hauseri already spanned two forms, or it looks like the peninsular males and West Java holds something else.

Morph, cline or species complex? Genitalia, COI barcodes, longer series and a look at the types would settle it. Until then, I am not convinced that hauseri is a single species.

Have you seen hauseri from other localities? Write to me at hola@mantodealab.com or on Instagram.

Plates

References

Photos and specimens: coll. E. Candela. Roy, R. (2009). Révision des Toxoderini sensu novo (Mantodea, Toxoderinae). Revue suisse de Zoologie 116(1): 93-183. Also Schwarz & Konopik (2014), Zootaxa 3797(1): 130-168; Markey (2022), Zenodo 7314686.