A possible female of Postoptica Disney (Diptera: Phoridae) and a revised placement of the Termitoxeniinae

ABSTRACT

Evidence that an enigmatic female phorid fly from Thailand belongs to genus Postoptica Disney is given. Our comparison of these specimens to the described species of the subfamily Termitoxeniinae indicates the possibility that the abdomen of this genus is a plesiomorphic precursor to the highly derived female abdomen in this subfamily. We discuss the value of previously published and some newly proposed characters for resolving the phylogenetic position of Postoptica and Termitoxeniinae in light of these new specimens.

KEYWORDS:

• Phylogeny
• humpbacked flies
• morphology
• taxonomy

Acknowledgments

Line drawings were expertly done by Brian Koehler. We are grateful to Mike Sharkey and all the participants in the TIGER project for making this study possible. TIGER was funded by NSF grant DEB-0542864 to M. Sharkey and B. Brown.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Purchase of the SEM at the LACM was funded by NSF grant DBI-2018207. This study is also a contribution to the project 457837041 (SO 894/6-1) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).