CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Despite the genital structures in insects are consistently important as systematic and taxonomy evidence, within Assassins bugs (Reduviidae) at least, the male and female genitalic structures of several subfamilies are poorly or totally unknown. This is the case of the Saicinae that comprises 25 genera and 155 species worldwide, with 11 genera and 48 species known from the Neotropical region, and the remaining known from Afrotropical, Australian and Oriental regions. Saicinae has been considered as closely related to Emesinae and Visayanocorinae but this hypothesis has never been tested with a comprehensive taxon sampling. Recent studies analyzing morphologic and molecular data at the family level suggest that Saicinae might be paraphyletic, because of the uncertain position of Oncerotrachelus Stål, 1868 (Saicinae) and Carayonia Villiers, 1951 (Visayanocorinae).. The genital structure is mostly symmetric within Saicinae genera, but male genital asymmetry has been recorded in Gallobelgicus Distant, 1906 and Polytoxus Spinola, 1850. Here, we compiled a morphological data set of 164 characters that includes external morphological characters and genitalia of both sexes of Saicinae which was analyzed cladistically including 52 terminals, comprising 14 genera (56% of the generic diversity), 41 species of Saicinae and 11 outgroups. Saicinae was recovered as paraphyletic with two main clades: Clade Oncerotrachelus and Clade Saicinae sensu stricto. Collartida nigella (Emesinae) is recovered as sister-species of the two main clades. Saicireta correntina is recovered as sister-species of Empicoris armatus (Emesinae). Ancestral state reconstruction of symmetry of the male genitalia shows an ancestor with symmetric male genitalia, two independent emergences of asymmetrical male genitalia within Saicinae sensu stricto, and the endosomal sclerites asymmetrical appearing before other asymmetric traits.

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