Leptocoris is the largest genus of bugs in the subfamily Serinethinae. Species in this genus are distributed throughout Africa, South Asia, and Oceania, and are thought to have originated in Africa, where the greatest diversity of Leptocoris species are found. Several species are known as soapberry bugs in Australia, notably Leptocoris mitellatus.
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Leptocoris is the largest genus of bugs in the subfamily Serinethinae. Species in this genus are distributed throughout Africa, South Asia, and Oceania, and are thought to have originated in Africa, where the greatest diversity of Leptocoris species are found. Several species are known as soapberry bugs in Australia, notably Leptocoris mitellatus.
==Description== Members of this genus are large-bodied and have short, wide pronota; they are similar in appearance to the New World genus Jadera (of which there is no range overlap). Leptocoris species can be easily distinguished from the small, slender Boisea (of which there is substantial range overlap). The Australian Leptocoris tagalicus has been studied for its ability to rapidly adapt to invasive hosts (e.g. balloon vine) and is seen as a possible means of biocontrol for environmental weeds. The southeast Asian species Leptocoris vicinus is common in urban settings, although it is frequently misidentified as Leptocoris augur.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).