''Paropsides'' is a genus of

beetles Beetles are insects that form the Taxonomic rank, order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, Elytron, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, wit ...

commonly called

leaf beetles The insects of the beetle family Chrysomelidae are commonly known as leaf beetles, and include over 37,000 (and probably at least 50,000) species in more than 2,500 genera, making up one of the largest and most commonly encountered of all beetle ...

and in the subfamily

Chrysomelinae The Chrysomelinae are a subfamily of leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae), commonly known as broad-bodied leaf beetles or broad-shouldered leaf beetles. It includes some 3,000 species around the world. The best-known member is the notorious Colorado po ...

. They are distributed from

eastern Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea a ...

to eastern Australia. ''Paropsides'' are small and specialist feeders on native Australian plants. There are 21 species in Australia and they occur mainly on the south-eastern states. The green ''Paropsides calypso'' is a native species which commonly attacks the lillipilli genus ''

Syzygium ''Syzygium'' () is a genus of flowering plants that belongs to the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. The genus comprises about 1200 species, and has a native range that extends from Africa and Madagascar through southern Asia east through the Pacific. I ...

''. ''Paropsides opposita'' feeds on Tea tree '' Melaleuca sp''. ''Paropsides'' belongs to the ''Paropsis''-group of genera, with similar head, appendages,

prosternum The prothorax is the foremost of the three segments in the thorax of an insect, and bears the first pair of legs. Its principal sclerites (exoskeletal plates) are the pronotum ( dorsal), the prosternum (ventral), and the propleuron ( lateral) on ...

elytra An elytron (; ; , ) is a modified, hardened forewing of beetles (Coleoptera), though a few of the true bugs ( Hemiptera) such as the family Schizopteridae are extremely similar; in true bugs, the forewings are called hemelytra (sometimes altern ...

, tarsi and

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. Th ...

. Among these genera it is defined by possession of a single attribute, a full complement of pronotal (thoracic)

trichobothria Trichobothria (singular trichobothrium) are elongate setae ("hairs") present in arachnids, various orders of insects, and myriapods that function in the detection of airborne vibrations and currents, and electrical charge. In 1883, Friedrich Dahl o ...

(bristles), which is almost certainly a

plesiomorphy In phylogenetics, a plesiomorphy ("near form") and symplesiomorphy are synonyms for an ancestral character shared by all members of a clade, which does not distinguish the clade from other clades. Plesiomorphy, symplesiomorphy, apomorphy, an ...

. ''Paropsides'' is therefore unlikely to be

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic ...

References

Chrysomelinae Beetles of Asia Beetles of Australia Chrysomelidae genera Taxa named by Victor Motschulsky {{Chrysomelinae-stub