Ephydrini

Mathis, Wayne N. & Sepúlveda, Luciane Marinoni and Tatiana A., 2025, Phylogeny and taxonomy of the shore-fly tribe Ephydrini with comments on related tribes in Ephydrinae (Diptera: Ephydridae), Zoologia (e 24044) 42, pp. 1-42 : 2

The tribe Ephydrini and its current phylogenetic relationships

In the classification of Ephydrinae , three groups have been described:the group Coenia plus related genera ( Mathis 1979b) as the sister group of Scatella and related genera ( Mathis 1979b), and a group with Paracoenia and related genera (group II; Mathis 1979b), Austrocoenia and Ephydrini . Olafsson (1991) presented a phylogeny of Ephydrinae based on genera from the western Palearctic Region. In his study, Olafsson proposed a monophyletic group without postpronotal setae and named it as the tribe Scatellini , thus moving Coenia to Ephydrini . The other genera comprising the group, Paracoenia , Austrocoenia and Coenia , were later moved to Ephydrini , leaving 13 genera in the tribe ( Zatwarnicki 1992).

Through the years, the taxonomy, phylogeny, and classification of the tribe Ephydrini have undergone many modifications. These studies were usually based on limited groups of species or restricted geographic areas, never on a comprehensive, global basis, making the relationships among these genera less well understood. To clarify these relationships, we have undertaken a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis to test the monophyly of tribe Ephydrini and the tribe’s included genera and subgenera, based on morphological characters from adult males and females. A hypothesis of relationships among taxa within Ephydrini and the other tribes of Ephydrinae are discussed.