Lethaeini is a tribe of the family Rhyparochromidae. Stål (1872) mentioned it first as division Lethaearia. Slater (1964) catalogued the Lethaeini tribe with 26 genera and 111 species; later Slater and O'Donnell (1995) with 36 genera and 156 species. Today the group includes 182 known recent species in 40 genera. Recently several researchers studied the group from various geographical regions: mostly from the Neotropical Region and Mexico (e.g. Cervantes 2012, Cervantes & Brailovsky 2008, Dellapé & Coscarón 2004, Dellapé et al. 2015 and O'Donnell 2007), a few from the Oriental Region (Kondorosy 2006, Li & Bu 2006, Li et al. 2011, Zsalakovics & Kondorosy 2014), while from the Afrotropical Region the last paper was published by Slater and O'Donnell (1999). The Pacific Region was not studied for almost 30 years. The majority of the Pacific species (21) are known from the Australian continent; only 4 Lethaeini species, all of the genus Neolethaeus Distant, 1909 are known from the Pacific islands, 3 of them from New Guinea. N. descriptus (Walker, 1872) is known from India to the Solomon Islands but not published from New Guinea. From the New Guinean species N. cheesmanae Woodward, 1968 seems to be endemic on the island, N. cantrelli Woodward, 1968 even reaches the northern part of Australia, while N. tenebrosus (Distant, 1914) is known from some Melanesian islands reaching all the way to New Caledonia.