Title
First tropical American species of the "relict" genus Litoleptis, and relationships in Spaniinae (Diptera, Rhagionidae)
Title Variants
Alternative:
New tropical species of Litoleptis
Related Titles
Series:
American Museum novitates, number 3909
By
Grimaldi, David A.
, author
Type
Book
Material
Published material
Publication info
New York, NY American Museum of Natural History [2018]
Notes
Caption title.
"October 9, 2018."
The genus Litoleptis has consisted of nine described species, seven of them Asian and only two in the New World: L. alaskensis Chillcott, known from two specimens from northwest Alaska, and L. chilensis Hennig, known from a male specimen from near Santiago, Chile. A third New World species is described here, Litoleptis tico, n. sp., based on a single female from Costa Rica. The species is unique for the genus in having a vestigial proboscis and lacking spermathecal accessory ducts and glands. Female terminalia are unknown for the other two New World species. A morphologically based, preliminary phylogeny of spaniines is provided, indicating Litoleptis is recently derived among spaniines and thus Rhagionidae; the Early Cretaceous Litoleptis fossilis is a stem group to the living species. A derived position of the genus, its apparently broad distribution, and an abundance in Japan where Litoleptis has been bred from liverworts (Imada and Kato, 2016a), all indicate that these flies are probably not at all relict, simply vastly undersampled because of a reliance on mass-collecting techniques.
Subjects
Classification
,
Costa Rica
,
Geographical distribution
,
Insects
,
Litoleptis
,
Litoleptis tico
,
Phylogeny
,
Rhagionidae
,
San JoseĢ (Province)
,
Spaniinae
Call Number
QL1 .A436 no.3909 2018
Language
English
Identifiers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1206/3909.1
OCLC:
1056158297
Find in a local library