Name: Juliana Martins da Silva Freitas
Type: PhD thesis
Publication date: 30/04/2020
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Marcelo Teixeira Tavares | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Anamaria Dal Molin | External Examiner * |
| Cecília Waichert Monteiro | External Examiner * |
| Frederico Falcão Salles | Internal Examiner * |
| Julia Calhau Almeida | External Alternate * |
| Marcelo Teixeira Tavares | Advisor * |
| Pâmella Machado Saguiah | Internal Alternate * |
| Taissa Rodrigues Marques da Silva | Internal Examiner * |
Summary: Stypiura and Parastypiura (Hymenoptera: Chalcididae) are two Neotropical genera that represent
almost all Phasgonophorini in the region. This tribe has a worldwide distribution and the species
with known biology are parasitoids of xylophagous beetle, an uncommon habit among
Chalcididae. The alpha and beta taxonomic knowledge of Stypiura and Parastypiura are
fundamental to understanding the diversity and evolution of Phasgonophorini in the New World.
Although both genera have been treated as monophyletic clades, this interpretation results from
studies that present bias such as subsampling of the species and use of genera as their
Operational Taxonomic Unit (OUT). Another problem is the lack of alpha taxonomic
knowledge. Even with the advances published in the last four decades, many species still
undescrideb. Among the described species, many can only be recognized with the type analysis.
Thus, the goals of this work were to review the alpha and beta taxonomy of the genera Stypiura
and Parastypiura. In Chapter 1, we present a cladistic assessment to infer the relationship of
species of the two genera and between these species and the remaining Phasgonophorini. The
analyzes were based on 104 morphological characters, 69 of which were unpublished. The data
matrix was organized using DELTA and analyzed using TNT. The analysis was based on
traditional and on New Technologies searches, and, In both cases, with implicit weighting.
Branch support was evaluated using symmetric resampling. The trees were analyzed with
Winclada. Phasgonophorini was recovered as a monophyletic group with high support values.
The Stypiura + Parastypiura clade was also recovered as monophyletic in all analyzes and with
good support values. Parastypiura appeared as a well-defined clade, but rendered Stypiura
paraphyletic in all cases. Thus, we propose Parastypiura as a junior synonym of Stypiura. In
Chapter 2, we present an alpha-taxonomic study of Stypiura (= Parastypiura + Stypiura). We
examined 514 specimens, from different sub-regions of Neotropical, and we recognized 10
described species and 49 species new to science. Descriptions (or redescriptions) and
illustrations are presented for all species, as well as an identification key. As taxonomic
adjustments, we propose the synonymy of S. basalis (Walker) under S. condalus (Walker) and
designate the lectotype of S batesii (Kirby, 1883), and the lectotype and paralectotype of S.
pulchripennis (Ashmead, 1904). With this work, the number of described species of Stypiura
goes from 10 to 59, expanding five times its richness.
Keywords: Chalcidinae, Phasgonophorini, Phylogeny, Taxonomy.
