Grafting the molecular phylogenetic tree with morphological branches to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the genus Zaprionus (Diptera: Drosophilidae)

On the Relationship betweenZaprionus spinipilusChassagnard & McEvey andZ. vittigerCoquillett, the Type Species of the GenusZaprionus(Diptera: Drosophilidae)

“…Chassagnard & Tsacas (1993) suggested the armatus group to contain three subgroups: armatus, tuberculatus and vittiger based on morphological data. Yassin et al (2008a) other species previously classifi ed under the armatus subgroup by Chassagnard & Tsacas (1993) need to be revised when other specimens available for molecular analyses can be captured. Yassin et al (2008a) Zaprionus simplex, which traditionally belongs to the inermis group, appears as the earliest branching lineage of Zaprionus s.s. Yassin et al (2008a) suggested on the basis of morphological characters this species to belong to the armatus species complex.…”

“…We have recently conducted a molecular phylogenetic revision of Zaprionus (Yassin et al 2008a), where a strain from Kibalé (Uganda) was assigned, on the basis of dark spots on the posterior margin of abdominal tergites, to Z. vittiger. Th e phylogenetic positioning of this species was shown to be distant from cryopreserved specimens of the type strain of Z. spinipilus.…”

“…Th e recent availability of these living strains in our laboratory has prompted us to conduct the present study, in order to investigate the boundary between the two nominal species, Z. vittiger and Z. spinipilus, by using molecular, karyological, morphological and hybridization analyses. Yassin et al (2008a) (Yassin et al 2008b), whereas Z. litos and Z. simplex are endemic to Madagascar and belong to the inermis group (Chassagnard & McEvey 1992). Zaprionus campestris is a widespread species throughout the Afrotropical region and belongs to the armatus subgroup of the armatus group (Chassagnard & Tsacas 1993).…”

“…Zaprionus campestris is a widespread species throughout the Afrotropical region and belongs to the armatus subgroup of the armatus group (Chassagnard & Tsacas 1993). For comparative purposes the same two genes (COII and Amyrel) used by Yassin et al (2008a) were sequenced for the fi ve species. DNA extraction, PCR amplifi cation and sequencing were as in Yassin et al (2008b) for COII and Da Lage et al (2007) for Amyrel.…”

“…Sequence alignment and phylogenetic analyses were performed using Molecular Evolutionary Genetic Analysis (MEGA) version 4 (Tamura et al 2007) and MrBayes version 3.2 (Ronquist & Huelsenbeck 2003) software packages. Bayesian inference of phylogeny was conducted using the same parameters as in Yassin et al (2008a). Analyses other than molecular ones have only been applied to the two species Z. vittiger and Z. spinipilus.…”