Evolution of Philopotinae, with a revision and phylogeny of the New World spider fly genusPhilopota Wiedemann (Diptera, Acroceridae)

Abstract

Philopotinae are hunchbacked spider flies represented by 63 fossil and extant species in 15 genera worldwide. Philopota Wiedemann, 1830, is the most species-rich genus within the subfamily. Here, the evolution of Philopotinae is discussed, and a revision and phylogeny of Philopota based on adult morphology are presented. Nine of the 12 extant Philopotinae genera were included in our analysis, and 22 species were recognized in Philopota, of which 13 are described as new. Seven new synonymies are proposed. The phylogenetic analysis included 33 terminal taxa (22 ingroup and 11 outgroup species) and used 53 morphological characters, resulting in a single most parsimonious tree under equal weights. The monophyly of Philopota is recovered, and the Palaearctic genus Oligoneura is hypothesized as its sister-group.

Evolution of fossil and living spider flies based on morphological and molecular data (Diptera, Acroceridae)

“…Oligoneura and Philopota , in which the proboscis is much longer than the head). In our analyses, Terphis was nested within Philopota , but Gillung & Nihei () placed the genus as sister to Africaterphis based on the presence of two ocelli, eyes contiguous below the antennae, and male abdomen globose (as opposed to conical as in the majority of philopotine species).…”

“…As currently defined, species of Philopota are restricted to the New World, whereas species of Oligoneura are distributed in the Far Eastern Palearctic (Japan, Northern China, South Korea and Taiwan). The two genera are extremely similar morphologically but can be differentiated by the density of the eye pilosity, frons size and presence/absence of maxillary palpi (Schlinger, ; Gillung & Nihei, ). However, these characters are not reliable generic traits as they vary wildly within genera of spider flies; such variation in these characters undermining generic concepts were previously found in Panops (see Winterton, ) and Prophilopota (see Gillung & Winterton, ).…”

“…DNA samples were obtained for 60 species of Acroceridae from 31 genera, representing all subfamilies and major lineages of spider flies (Table S1), which were also sampled for morphological data. In addition, morphological data were sampled for ten fossil species representing nine genera, based on ongoing taxonomic studies (Gillung & Winterton, 2011;Winterton & Gillung, 2012;Schlinger et al, 2013;Borkent et al, 2016;Gillung & Nihei, 2016;Gillung & Winterton, 2017). The compression fossils Archocyrtus gibbosus Ussatchov and Archocyrtus kovalevi (Nartshuk) were not included due to lack of preserved morphological characters (Gillung & Winterton, 2017).…”

“…Previous analyses of morphological data, by contrast, recovered Philopota as monophyletic, defined by one synapomorphy (i.e. frons height twice as long as width) (Gillung & Nihei, 2016). Oligoneura was treated as a junior synonym of Philopota for decades by multiple authors (see Gillung & Nihei, 2016), until Schlinger (1971) resurrected the genus.…”

Jewelled spider flies of North America: a revision and phylogeny of Eulonchus Gerstaecker (Diptera, Acroceridae)

“…The family comprises a morphologically heterogeneous assemblage of taxa, with approximately 550 species in 55 genera (Schlinger et al 2013) distributed in all major biogeographic regions. Acroceridae is divided into three subfamilies: Philopotinae, Panopinae and the polyphyletic Acrocerinae (Schiner 1868; Cole 1919; Schlinger 1981; Winterton et al 2007; Gillung and Nihei 2016). Adults are remarkably diverse in morphology, sometimes with elongated mouthparts for nectar feeding or with a strongly arched thorax, while the larvae are specialised endoparasitoids of spiders.…”