Assassin bugs (Insecta, Heteroptera, Reduviidae) collected by the AFRP expedition to Southeast Asia for 10 years

Assassin bugs, or the Reduviidae, form the second largest family in number in the insect order Heteroptera, comprising approximately 7,000 species worldwide. All of them show predatory habits, feeding on small arthropods such as insect and millipedes, with a certain group having vertebrate-blood sucking habits. As the family includes many members attacking such pest insects as beetles and larvae of moths, some species have been investigated for use in biological control against agricultural pests (e.g.,Pristhesancus plagipennis against pests of cotton and soybean crops in Australia). By the middle of 20th century, a number of reduviids had been described or recorded from various areas of Southeast Asia such as Sumatra, Java, Borneo (Kalimantan), Sulawesi and New Guinea (Irian Jaya) by old heteropterists such as Distant, Miller and Wygodzinsky. Since that time, little has been published on the Reduviidae in Southeast Asia for about forty years. Within the past ten years, several species of the Reduviidae have been newly described and recorded from Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia (East Java, Bali and Flores) by the member of AFRP. These facts indicate that these regions are still poorly investigated even though there are several historical studies on the Reduviidae. In the course of extensive faunal studies of the Southeast Asian Reduviidae conducted with AFRP for about ten years in undersampled countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia (East Java, Bali and Flores), a number of specimens of the Reduviidae were collected. The collection indicates that high species diversity of this Reduviidae may be also kept in Southeast Asia. Moreover, many of the species collected were recognized not only to be unrecorded in respective countries or areas but also to be undescribed (new to science). This presentation highlights the assassin bugs from the faunistic viewpoint listing the species collected by our surveys from Southeast Asia for ten years and providing information available for considering the predators as biocontrol agents as well.