Abstract
In 1907 Shelford described "Phyllodromia japonica" from "Riou-Kiou, Oshima, Japan." He soon transferred it to the genus Liosilpha, but it had remained neglected until Princis included it in the genus Shelfordina in his Blattariae Catalogus (1969). In 1973 I had an opportunity to examine the type specimens (2 ♀♀) in the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, and found them to be a Symploce species which was the same with "Ischnoptera testacea (Shiraki, 1908)" known from Kyushu, Japan. In the present paper, the synonymies were clarified and a description was given for both the sexes, as the male insect has never been described. I took this opportunity to designate the Lectotype specimen to be one of the females in the Paris Museum, the right side one in Fig. 1. For the Allotype specimen I selected a male individual taken by Mr. S. Tachikawa at Yuwandake, Amami-oshima in the Ryukyus. (Fig. 2) The distributional range of this species hitherto known covers Amami-oshima, Takarajima, Tenagashima and Kyushu (Kumamoto, Unzen, Amakusa, Nagasaki). Specimens from Takarajima have a more rounded supra-anal plate in the male insect (Fig. 14). It is interesting to note that this species is most closely allied to Symploce okinoerabuensis Asahina (1974), a cavernicolous species found from Okinoerabu Island situated to the south of A-mami Island.
