Drosophila kikkawai Burla, 1954:47

Mcevey, Shane F. & Polak, Michal, 2021, Drosophilidae (Diptera) of the Cook Islands, Records of the Australian Museum (Rec. Aust. Mus.) 73 (5), pp. 153-170 : 166-167

Drosophila kikkawai Burla, 1954:47

Not encountered on Mangaia, rare on Aitutaki, this species is present in small numbers at sites on Rarotonga. Brake & Bächli (2008) report this species from all zoogeographical regions of the world except Nearctic and Antarctic. Burla (1954) showed that the name Drosophila montium de Meijere, 1916 , was incorrectly applied to a widespread species reported from Africa, the Oriental Region and across the Pacific to South America; in fact D. montium has a very restricted distribution in montane Java (Tjibodas, alternate spelling Cibodas, is the type locality), and the widespread species Burla named D. kikkawai using specimens from Brazil. Drosophila kikkawai and D. montium both possess a distinctive pair of longitudinal sex combs: one comb on the first tarsomere (metatarsus) the other on the second tarsomere, teeth densely packed and contiguous. The caudal margin of the gonocoxite is strongly convex and narrow, a key diagnostic character is the presence in D. kikkawai of a pair of very long spines arising at the tip of this narrow convexity, absent in D. montium and D. serrata Malloch, 1927 and the several other species of the complex in northern Australia and New Guinea. Many very similar species have been described from New Guinea and Australia (all lacking the long medial gonopodal setae) on the basis of differences in male terminalia (e.g., D. serrata ; D. birchii Dobzhansky & Mather, 1961 ; D. mayri Mather & Dobzhansky, 1962 ; D. dominicana Ayala, 1965 ; D. pseudomayri Baimai, 1970 ; D. pennae Bock & Wheeler, 1972 ; D. rhopaloa Bock & Wheeler, 1972 ; D. rhombura Okada & Carson, 1983 ; and D. bunnanda Schiffer & McEvey, 2006 ) but apparently only D. kikkawai has dispersed into the TSP; the identity of the present sample has been confirmed by dissection (AM K.385605) and figured by Rodriguez-Exposito, GarciaGonzalez, & Polak (2020).

McEvey & Polak: Cook Islands Drosophilidae 167