Pentatomidae is one of the largest families within the Heteroptera and contains many species of economic importance, either by being plant pests or by their usefulness as biological control agents. The family is subdivided into as many as ten subfamilies; however, the monophyly of this taxon and phylogenetic relationships within the family have remained unstudied. In this paper, molecular data from mitochondrial [COI (564 bp), 16S RNA (592 bp)] and nuclear genes [28S RNA (646 bp), 18S RNA (1759 bp)] concatenated into a single matrix of 3589 bp, with a sampling of 160 taxa, were used to test the monophyly of the family and relationships based on Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian Inference (BI) analyses. Both approaches yielded very similar topologies. The most striking result recovered in both analyses is the rejection of the monophyly of Pentatomidae as currently recognized, since Cyrtocorinae do not show a sister relationship with the clade composed of (Serbana + Pentatomidae sensu stricto) in any of the analyses. We corroborate Serbaninae as the sister lineage to all remaining Pentatomidae sensu stricto, and not as a member of Phloeidae as previously hypothesized. The monophyly of Podopinae and Pentatominae, and some of their respective tribes, is rejected. We discuss the current classification of this family and highlight the necessity of a reinterpretation based on the results herein obtained pointing out some of their morphological features. Additionally, cyrtocorids are defined as an independent lineage and upgraded to Cyrtocoridae stat. rev.

BackgroundA large scale semi-quantitative biodiversity assessment was conducted in white oak woodlands in areas included in the Spanish Network of National Parks, as part of a project aimed at revealing biogeographic patterns and identify biodiversity drivers. The semi-quantitative COBRA sampling protocol was conducted in sixteen 1-ha plots across six national parks using a nested design. All adult specimens were identified to species level based on morphology. Uncertain delimitations and identifications due to either limited information of diagnostic characters or conflicting taxonomy were further investigated using DNA barcode information.New informationWe identified 376 species belonging to 190 genera in 39 families, from the 8,521 adults found amongst the 20,539 collected specimens. Faunistic results include the discovery of 7 new species to the Iberian Peninsula, 3 new species to Spain and 11 putative new species to science. As largely expected by environmental features, the southern parks showed a higher proportion of Iberian and Mediterranean species than the northern parks, where the Palearctic elements were largely dominant. The analysis of approximately 3,200 DNA barcodes generated in the present study, corroborated and provided finer resolution to the morphologically based delimitation and identification of specimens in some taxonomically challenging families. Specifically, molecular data confirmed putative new species with diagnosable morphology, identified overlooked lineages that may constitute new species, confirmed assignment of specimens of unknown sexes to species and identified cases of misidentifications and phenotypic polymorphisms.

The ground-dweller spider genus Dysdera shows very high species richness on the oceanic archipelago of the Canary Islands, providing one of the most outstanding examples of island radiation among spiders, only paralleled by Tetragnatha spiders on the Hawaiian archipelago. A georeferenced database of the 48 Dysdera species occurring in the Canary Islands was assembled to facilitate ongoing and future research on this remarkable lineage. All species are endemic to the archipelago except for the cosmopolitan Dysdera crocata. The dataset consists of 794 distributional records documented from 1971 to 2015, each locality being represented only once per species. Distribution maps are provided for each species, along with basic diversity and distribution information. The database and geographical maps included in this article stand for the most updated, accurate and complete information on the distribution of the spider genus Dysdera in the Canary Islands.

Previous phylogenetic studies of the tribe Synergini were focused on Palaearctic material, in which the genus Synergus was recovered as monophyletic, despite evidence of non-monophyly when global sampling is considered. A global molecular phylogeny of Synergini, including sequenced material from Nearctic and Neotropical realms, is presented herein for the first time. We assembled DNA data for 120 specimens: 104 representing all genera belonging to Synergini, except for the rare monospecific genus Agastoroxenia (ingroup), and 16 belonging to five other tribes of Cynipidae (outgroup). We obtained sequences for four genes: cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI), cytochrome b (Cytb), 28S region D2 (28S D2) and 28S region D3 (28S D3). The evaluated analyses support the non-monophyly of both Saphonecrus and Synergus (with Nearctic and Neotropical Synergus resolved into three clades separated from the Palaearctic species), as well as the monophyly of the rest of the genera in Synergini. Furthermore, the results suggest that neither Saphonecrus s.s. nor Synergus s.s. are present in the New World. The future challenges to separate the clades of Saphonecrus and Synergus into new taxa are discussed. Lastly, Rhoophilus was shown to belong to a new tribe, Rhoophilini trib. nov., on the basis of molecular, morphological and biological data.