Mesoconius nono group, 2019

Marshall, Stephen A., 2019, A revision of the genus Mesoconius Enderlein (Diptera, Micropezidae, Taeniapterinae), European Journal of Taxonomy 548, pp. 1-126 : 75

Mesoconius nono group

The Mesoconius nono group, diagnosed by the presence of outer vertical bristles and the absence of a conspicuously swollen katatergite, includes 11 South American species ( M. aurantium sp. nov., M. bipleuron sp. nov., M. garyi sp. nov., M. hoffmansi , M. nono sp. nov., M. ottoi nom. nov., M. reinai sp. nov., M scurrus , M. uchumachi sp. nov., M. wytkoskyi sp. nov. and M. zorro sp. nov.) and one Central American species ( M. nigrihumeralis Marshall, 2015 ) ( Fig. 30 ). Both diagnostic characters are plesiomorphic, and the presence or absence of the outer vertical bristle can be difficult to assess on older type specimens. Furthermore, most species are known from inadequate material, rendering it impossible to assess and compare phylogenetically informative characters of the male and female terminalia. Nine out of the 12 species are known from one sex only and only seven species are known from males; of these only five, including the Central American M. nigrihumeralis , could be examined for male genitalic characters (two species are known only from older holotype males and could not be dissected). The species for which male terminalia were examined have a truncate or vestigial distal distiphallus, markedly unlike the elongate distiphallus of other species groups. They also have a broad, scoop-like hypandrium unlike the twisted hypandrium of the infestus group or the narrow, ribbon-like hypandrium of the M. eques group. Five species in this group were sequenced for CO1 and are shown on three widely separated branches of the resulting maximum likelihood tree ( Fig. 50 ).

Figures

Fig. 30. Species of the Mesoconius nono group known only from original type specimens. A–B. Mesoconius hoffmannsi (Enderlein, 1922), holotype (Peru), ♂, MNBG. C–D. Mesoconius ottoi nom. nov. (replacement name for Tanypoda garleppi Enderlein, 1922), lectotype (Bolivia), ♀, MNBG. E. Mesoconius scurrus (Hennig, 1935), holotype (Bolivia), ♂, SMTD.

Fig. 50. Maximum likelihood tree from CO1 barcodes. Sequences were aligned using BOLD (amino acid based HMM) and then manually corrected. Maximum likelihood analysis was performed in RAxML (ver. 8.2) using GTR-G with 100 replicates.