Gynoplistia Westwood, 1835

Billingham, Zacariah D., Theischinger, Gunther & Levesque-Beaudin, Valerie, 2023, Two new species of crane fly (Diptera: Limoniidae) from Tasmania, Australia, Zootaxa 5256 (1), pp. 77-83 : 78

Genus Gynoplistia Westwood, 1835

Type species: Gynoplistia vilis Walker, 1835 , subsequent designation by Brunetti, 1918.

Diagnosis. Rostrum markedly shorter than remainder of head; antennae with more than 11 flagellomeres; eyes glabrous; tibial spurs present; cell C without supernumerary crossveins; Sc l absent or much shorter than Rs; Sc ending beyond origin of Rs; four branches of R reaching the wing margin; no X-shaped vein crossing formed by R l, R l+2 and R 3; R 2 present; R 2+3+4 markedly shorter than R 4 and mostly shorter than basal section of R 5; r-m present; mcu some distance before apex of discal medial cell (modified from Theischinger 1993). Hypopygium with paramere and interbase apparently fused (Ribeiro 2008).

Gynoplistia includes over 300 species, occurring across the Australasian and Neotropic biogeographic realms. Their diversity is greatest in Australia and New Zealand, with 116 and 108 species recorded respectively ( Oosterbroek 2023). All Australian species of Gynoplistia are endemic.

Theischinger (1993) completed an extensive review of the Australian Gynoplistia , describing many new species and providing a key to the subgenera and species groups. Following Theischinger’s review additional new species have been described over several works ( Billingham & Theischinger 2017, 2018a; Theischinger 1994, 1999, 2000).

Gynoplistia is readily distinguished from other Australian limoniid genera using the key provided in Theischinger (1996b).