Exploring Phylogenetic Relationships of the Mecocephala Group (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) Using Continuous and Discrete Characters, with Notes on Taxonomy.
Lurdiana Dayse de Barros, Kim Ribeiro Barão, Jocélia Grazia
{"title":"Exploring Phylogenetic Relationships of the Mecocephala Group (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) Using Continuous and Discrete Characters, with Notes on Taxonomy.","authors":"Lurdiana Dayse de Barros, Kim Ribeiro Barão, Jocélia Grazia","doi":"10.1007/s13744-024-01143-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Mecocephala group comprises about 50 species, restricted to the Neotropics and with the highest species richness in Neotropical South America. Several species use rice as host plants and their identification is facilitated by the presence of exaggerated head proportions and a unique male genitalic morphology. The taxonomy of the group has been extensively explored, but inferring its monophyly and especially its internal phylogenetic relationships has been challenging. Here, we inferred the phylogenetic relationships for the group assembling the most complete taxonomic sampling to date, analyzing discrete and continuous morphological characters through equal and implied weighted parsimony analyses. The monophyly of the group was recovered, but internal relationships varied slightly according to the dataset tested. Thus, we propose internal arrangements for the group and provide a formal description of the Mecocephala group, diagnoses for each genus, a dichotomous key to identify its genera, and illustrations of the morphological characters and type species.</p>","PeriodicalId":19071,"journal":{"name":"Neotropical Entomology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Neotropical Entomology","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-024-01143-8","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/7/2 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENTOMOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The Mecocephala group comprises about 50 species, restricted to the Neotropics and with the highest species richness in Neotropical South America. Several species use rice as host plants and their identification is facilitated by the presence of exaggerated head proportions and a unique male genitalic morphology. The taxonomy of the group has been extensively explored, but inferring its monophyly and especially its internal phylogenetic relationships has been challenging. Here, we inferred the phylogenetic relationships for the group assembling the most complete taxonomic sampling to date, analyzing discrete and continuous morphological characters through equal and implied weighted parsimony analyses. The monophyly of the group was recovered, but internal relationships varied slightly according to the dataset tested. Thus, we propose internal arrangements for the group and provide a formal description of the Mecocephala group, diagnoses for each genus, a dichotomous key to identify its genera, and illustrations of the morphological characters and type species.
期刊介绍:
Neotropical Entomology is a bimonthly journal, edited by the Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil (Entomological Society of Brazil) that publishes original articles produced by Brazilian and international experts in several subspecialties of entomology. These include bionomics, systematics, morphology, physiology, behavior, ecology, biological control, crop protection and acarology.