Newly Recognised Sibling Species Of Rhynchomicropteron nudiventer (Diptera: Phoridae)

作者：Disney R H L^*

来源：Sociobiology, 2010, 56(1): 249-253.

The genus Rhynchomicropteron Annandale (1912) has distinctive flightless females, which are characterized by narrow wing rudiments and a very long proboscis; as well as by their association with ants. The males are poorly known, but Brown (1992) reported that the genus Gymnoselia Schmitz (1927) represented the missing males, which had been assigned to a different subfamily. At present males can only be named by association with their females, unless covered by Brown (1992) or Schmitz (1929). Eventually it is likely that two Rhynchomicropteron species will be found to be the females of the two species of Gymnoselia; which were described from India and Java. The females of the sixteen species known from the Oriental Region were most recently keyed by Disney & Kistner (1998) supplemented by Disney (1999).
When Brown (1992) reared a species in Thailand, and he described the larvae and males, he had sent me a female which I attributed to R. nudiventer Papp (1982). The species R. nudiventer is keyed out (in Disney & Kistner 1998) in the final couplet, largely on the basis of negative characters, such as a lack of dorsal hair palisades on the hind tibiae and the lack of abdominal tergites. With the accumulation of further specimens in the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology (UCMZ) attributed to this species it has become apparent that the females of R. nudiventer are somewhat variable in addition to their variation in size. However, the species described below is now proposed as being a distinct sibling species of R. nudiventer.

• 出版日期2010