Hirotophora, Brown & Amorim & Kung, 2015

Brown, Brian V., Amorim, Dalton De Souza & Kung, Giar-Ann, 2015, New morphological characters for classifying Phoridae (Diptera) from the structure of the thorax, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 173 (2), pp. 424-485 : 483

HIROTOPHORA GEN. NOV.

Type species: Paraspiniphora multiseriata Aldrich.

Diagnosis. Phorinae , with lateral parapsidal suture short. Anepisternum with dense setulae and single long posterior seta. Meron concave. Mid- and hind tibia with dorsal transverse ctenidia.

Hirotophora is closely similar to Chaetocnemistoptera , but the latter lacks a long anepisternal seta.

Etymology. This genus is named in honour of our colleague Hiroto Nakayama, who has extensively studied the male genitalia of phorines.

The genus Triphleba , placed as a sister group to the rest of the Metopininae by Brown (1992), is here shown to be a relatively basal member of Phorinae . Brown’s incorrect placement of this genus was strongly contested by Disney & Ellwood (2001) on other morphological grounds. Indeed, the shared similarities between Triphleba and the metopinines pointed out by Brown (1992) are better explained as parallelisms.

Our data do not provide characters to resolve completely the relationships within the Phorinae . Indeed, the non-hypocerine and non-thaumatoxenine phorines correspond to a relatively unresolved grade at the base of the subfamily. All phorines other than the New Zealand Bothroprosopa group lack female tergite 7, however ( Brown, 1992). This makes the Bothroprosopa group the leading candidate as the sister taxon to other phorines, a placement not in any sense in disagreement with our new data. For the sake of facility in communication, we refer to two informal groupings:

‘Lower phorines’. This is probably a paraphyletic assemblage of taxa lacking the synapomorphies of the higher phorines. Included genera are Aenigmatias , Anevrina , the New Zealand Bothroprosopa group ( Bothroprosopa , Ceratoplatus , Palpocrates , Tarsocrates , Tonnoirina ), Burmophora , Ceratusa , Chaetopleurophora , the conicerines, Phora , Plethysmochaeta , Rhynchomicropteron , Spiniphora , Triphleba and others.

Higher phorines. This is a hypothesized monophyletic group consisting of the taxa referred to as hypocerines, thaumatoxenines, Chaetocnemistoptera , Diplonevra , Dohrniphora , Hirotophora and Neopleurophora . Even though further study may show changes in the position of some of the genera more basally in the clade, the nested features give great robustness to the clade including hypocerine genera.

Study of the phorid thorax, let alone other body features, is far from finished. A combination with other sources of data would provide an even more resolved result. Our study on the basal relationships of the phorids shows that there is a rich diversity of character states in thorax sclerite morphology still available to morphologists, largely unexploited in cladistic studies in other dipteran groups. We are aware of few phylogenetic studies of this detail on the thoracic (and other, non-genitalic) structure of individual Diptera families (to which Grimaldi, 1990 is a notable exception). Furthermore, thoracic structure seems to provide support for groupings at multiple levels within the phylogeny of Phoridae , and is thus a good source of phylogenetic information.