Cicadellidae
Leafhopper is the common name for any species from the family Cicadellidae: based on the type genus Cicadella. These minute insects, colloquially known as hoppers, are plant feeders that suck plant sap from grass, shrubs, or trees. Their hind legs are modified for jumping, and are covered with hairs that facilitate the spreading of a secretion over their bodies that acts as a water repellent and carrier of pheromones. They undergo a partial metamorphosis, and have various host associations, varying from very generalized to very specific. Some species have a cosmopolitan distribution, or occur throughout the temperate and tropical regions. Some are pests or vectors of plant viruses and phytoplasmas. The family is distributed all over the world, and constitutes the second-largest hemipteran family, with at least 20,000 described species.

User:Fir0002 , flagstaffotos.com.au · GFDL 1.2 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- leafhopperPBDB
- Sits inside
- MembracoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 139 million years on record.
The record covers at least 139.1 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 141 Mya to 0 Mya.
197 occurrences of Cicadellidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
197 occurrences- Early Cretaceous10%
- Late Cretaceous7%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene36%
- Oligocene19%
- Miocene18%
- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene5%
- Holocene2%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
26 formations
- Rott Formation29
- Green River Formation14
- Barstow Formation14
- Florissant Formation13
- Crato Formation · Santana Group12
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group5
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The named rock units Cicadellidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 79 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Cicadellidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Cicadellidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,985 taxa- Coleoptera9 sites
- Formicidae9 sites
- Carabidae7 sites
- Curculionidae7 sites
- Formicinae7 sites
- Ichneumonidae7 sites
- Miochlorotettix gibroni7 sites
- Trichoptera7 sites
- Diptera6 sites
- Dyschirius5 sites
- Dytiscidae5 sites
- Forcipomyia5 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi5 sites
- Lepidoptera5 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea5 sites
- Omaliinae5 sites
- Prenolepis henschei5 sites
- Staphylinidae5 sites
- Tetraponera simplex5 sites
- Tipulidae5 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi5 sites
- Acalyptratae4 sites
- Aleocharinae4 sites
- Amara4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 90 sites for Cicadellidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
68 references- Cicadariae (Zikaden) aus den Oberoligocanen Ablagerungen von Rott29
- The Tertiary Insects of North America19
- Fossil arthropods of California no. 25. Silicified leafhoppers from California mountains nodules13
- Insects from the Santana Formation, Lower Cretaceous, of Brazil. Chapter 6: Homoptera11
- Heer, 18539
- Leafhoppers (Homoptera: Cicadellidae) from Dominican Amber8
- Morphology-based phylogenetic analysis of Membracoidea (Hemiptera: Cicadomorpha) with placement of fossil taxa and description of a new subfamily7
- Die im Bernstein befindlichen Hemipteren und Orthopteren der Vorwelt7
- Typhlocybinae leafhoppers (Hemiptera, Cicadellidae) from Eocene Rovno amber reveal a transition in wing venation and a defensive adaptation5
- Aphids, true hoppers, jumping plant-lice, scale insects, true bugs and whiteflies (Insecta: Hemiptera) from the Insect Limestone (latest Eocene) of the Isle of Wight, UK5
- Terrestrial insects of the Rita Blanca lake deposits4
- Treticnye ravokrylye Stravropol'ja4
Each of the 197 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 56 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Cicadellidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Fir0002 , flagstaffotos.com.au
- Licence
- GFDL 1.2
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Leafhopper”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMembracoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Latreille 1825)