Elachiptera Macquart, 1835

Riccardi, Paula Raile & Hartop, Emily, 2024, Large-scale integrative taxonomy of Swedish grass flies (Diptera, Chloropidae) reveals hitherto unknown complexity of a dark taxon, Zoologica Scripta 53 (5), pp. 614-631 : 620

publication ID

https://doi.org/10.1111/zsc.12663

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/744087A6-FFAA-5376-FCDD-F8EE2054F9A0

treatment provided by

Felipe

scientific name

Elachiptera Macquart, 1835
status

 

4.2.1 | Genus Elachiptera Macquart, 1835 View in CoL

The most abundant Palearctic species of the genus Elachiptera is E.cornuta . With seven synonyms and varieties, this species represents a species complex briefly addressed by several authors (see von Tschirnhaus, 2017) but left as unresolved. As expected, three species assigned to E.cornuta (Figure 4H, I, K) were found in the present dataset. The diagnostic features: ocellar triangle not reaching frons apex, scutum shiny with two longitudinal dusted stripes along the dorsocentral lines, and apical scutellar setae close together outlined by Nartshuk and Andersson (2013) are present in all three of the forms identified in this study. Therefore, these morphological features should be disregarded for species recognition within this group. On the other hand, the male morphological features related to the epandrium, distiphallus and femoral organ were very effective to distinguish the varieties of E. cornuta within the Swedish species. Further studies targeting the same morphological features of the synonymized types of E.cornuta should correctly assign E.cornuta varieties within the described types, thus resolving this conundrum of species. The diagnostic features of the identified species of Elachiptera cornuta complex are in Table 1.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Insecta

Order

Diptera

Family

Chloropidae

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