''Perittopus zhengi'' is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of riffle bug from

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

(

Chiang Mai Province Chiang Mai is the largest Provinces of Thailand, province (''changwat'') of Thailand by area. It lies in Northern Thailand#Regional classification of northern Thailand, upper northern Thailand and has a population of 1.78 million people. It ...

). It was described in 2013 by Zhen Ye, Pingping Chen and Wenjun Bu, and is named after Professor Leyi Zheng. Its authors placed it to the "eastern species group" within genus ''

Perittopus ''Perittopus'' is a genus of Veliidae, riffle bug, and the sole genus of subfamily Perittopinae. Its species occur from southern India east to Indonesia and north to China in mountain stream habitats. Visually, the red or orange to reddish colou ...

''.

Description

Specimens of both sexes are orange and brown and have dark brown, segmented antennae. Among wingless ( apterous) specimens, females are longer than their male counterparts at respectively 3-3.1&mm and 2.7 mm body length. For winged (macropterous) specimens, this is the other way around: winged males are, at 3.4-3.5 mm, slightly larger than winged females, which measure 3.2-3.3 mm. Specimens resemble those of '' Perittopus asiaticus'', to which it is closely related and with which it may co-occur. Winged female specimens of both species are particularly difficult to reliably tell apart.

References

Veliidae Insects described in 2013 Insects of Thailand {{gerromorpha-stub