Systematics of the tribe Telothyriini Townsend, 1927 (Diptera: Tachinidae)

• Autor(a) principal: Garcia, Deivys Moises Alvarez
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/38/38131/tde-28012021-183428/
• topic: Ancestral state reconstruction; Filogenia; Phylogeny; Reconstrução do estado ancestral; Tachinid; Taquinídeo; Taxonomia; Taxonomy; Telothyria; Telothyria

Telothyriini is a peculiar tribe of subfamily Dexiinae (Diptera, Tachinidae), restricted to America. These flies are endoparasitoid that attack several families of Lepidotera, including some agricultural pests, and also are an important component of the parasitoid insect community in natural ecosystems. Despite its importance, this tribe has serious taxonomic problems, many of its species appear to be synonymous, its monophyly has never been tested and its phylogenetic relationships are totally unknown. For this, we present here the first systematic revision (taxonomic and phylogenetic) of tribe Telothyriini. The taxonomic work was based on an exhaustive morphologic analysis that included the examination of type specimens and a large number of non-type specimens of each species. The validity of each taxon was determined by the comparative analysis of external features and the terminalia. For the phylogenetic analysis, a matrix with 107 morphologic characters was constructed, and the search for trees was carried out under parsimony criterion. Of the 46 nominal species included in the tribe prior to this revision, 22 are considered as valid, 24 synonyms are proposed, and six new species are described; in this way, the tribe now becomes composed of 28 species. We provide a key to species, as well as detailed descriptions that include photographs and illustrations of adults and terminalia. Furthermore, the tribe is registered for the first time in ten countries, twelve species have new geographic records in different administrative units (country, state, or province), and eleven species are recorded for the first time in at least one country. Our phylogenetic analysis recovered Telothyriini as a monophyletic clade, and according to our criteria the tribe should remain monogeneric, with genus Telothyria only. The ancestral state reconstruction suggests that the ancestor of Telothyriini did not have feathery hairs on disc of mesonotum, and that transition to a hairy mesonotum occurred three times independently, in one of which a later transition from long to short feathery hairs was achieved. Finally, we consider feathery hairs a convergent character among Telothyriini and bees.