Contribution to the Planthopper Fauna of Greece (Homoptera, Auchenorrhyncha, Fulgoromorpha, Delphadidae)

Until 1978 Auchenorrhyncha were very little known in Greece as far as number of species, geographic distribution, biology and ecology are concerned. This prompted the authors to perform extensive investigations on this group of insects and in 1982 they started publishing the results of the, then almost unknown, family of Delphacidae. These results together with the data included in this paper are more than was expected, since in Greece more species were found than in any other Western European country where such investigations started since last century. Therefore a review on the Delphacidae fauna is presented here, together with new data on the geographic distribution, ecology and systematics of 100 species collected until October 1983. Eight of these 100 species have been or soon will be described as new species, while 20 other species are reported here for the first time from Greece. For these 28 species as well as for some other species ecological data are given, while precise identification characters are presented for 14 species which were insufficiently known, or appeared to differ from the description in the literature. For each of the 112 species that were found so far in Greece, its food plant species and its new geographical distribution are indicated. In addition are presented for each species distribution maps for the area of Greece. According to the data mentioned above a concise zoogeographical analysis is made, resulting in the following conclusions : (1) Greece so far is rather rich in endemics (2 genera, 12 species), (2) The number of european-eurosiberian species dominates the mediterranean, (3) Many species reach the limits of their distribution areas in Greece. The economic importance of this insect group is not yet known for Greece. However, from the literature it is known that some of these species are vectors of plant pathogens