New species of Plesioaxymyia Sinclair (Diptera, Axymyiidae) from the Palaearctic Region, including an updated molecular phylogeny of the family

By

Polevoi, Alexei
Burdíková, Nikola
Ševčík, Jan

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2025-05-05

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

1236

Pages

297--315

Subjects

Biology , Distribution , lower Diptera , Nematocera , new species , Russia , systematics

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1236.148218

 

Abstract

The family Axymyiidae includes four extant genera and nine species known from the Holarctic and Oriental regions, with only one species Mesaxymyia kerteszi (Duda, 1930) occurring in Europe. The genus Plesioaxymyia Sinclair, 2013 was first discovered in Alaska in 1962, but officially described only many years later. Up to now, the genus included one species Plesioaxymyia vespertina Sinclair, 2013, known from two female specimens from western North America. During the study of the Diptera fauna in Paanajarvi National Park (Northwest Russia), one female specimen of Plesioaxymyia, was found. It differs from the Nearctic P. vespertina by details of its female terminalia and is recognized as a new species, herein described as Plesioaxymyia imprevista sp. nov. The biology and geographic distribution of Plesioaxymyia is briefly discussed. The phylogenetic position of the genus, along with the family Axymyiidae is analyzed in the light of new molecular data, including sequences of three mitochondrial (ribosomal 12S and 16S and protein-encoding COI) and three nuclear genes (ribosomal 18S and 28S, protein-encoding CAD) for 72 terminal taxa. Axymyiidae is recovered as a monophyletic group with closest relatives in the infraorder Culicomorpha and Plesioaxymyia imprevista sp. nov. representing the sister taxon to all the other species of Axymyiidae included in the analysis.