PHYLOGENETIC REVISION OF ACANTHOCEPHALA LAPORTE 1833 (HEMIPTERA: HETEROPTERA : COREIDAE)

OLIVERA L.; MELO, MARÍA CECILIA; DELLAPÉ, PABLO M.

Congreso; Seventh meeting of the International Heteropterists' Society; 2022

The family Coreidae Leach is the most diverse of the five that currently comprise Coreoidea, including around 3.100 species and 519 genera worldwide, of which 158 are exclusively Neotropical. The members of the family are characterized by having robust and oval or elongated body, ranging from 6 to 40 mm in length; the head is smaller than the pronotum ; the antenna includes four segments; the membrane of hemelytra has abundant venation; the hind femora are thickened and spiny, mostly in males; the hind tibiae are cylindrical or with foliaceous expansions; they have three lateral trichobothria on abdominal sterna I to VI and two on segment VII; the spermatheca has a single flange; and the nymphs have dorsal abdominal scent glands on terga IV-V and V-VI. The genus Acanthocephala Laporte (subfamily Coreinae Leach, tribe Acanthocephalini Stål) currently includes 26 species that are distributed from Canada to Argentina. Its members are characterized by the sharply pointed tyTus projecting beyond juga as a compressed plate, the hind femora strongly thickened and spiny and more developed in males, and the hind tibiae have foliaceous expansions in both sexes. Most of the Acanthocephala species were described in the 19 h century and their identity is unclear, there are many synonymous, and some have only been mentioned in a few works; little is known about their host plants and life cycle, and their distribution is known only from a lew records. As part of LO PhD thesis, a systematic revision of this group has been done and a morphological phylogenetic analysis was performed, combining continuous (16) and discrete (100) characters, including 52 terminal taxa, where 14 of them are new species, with a significant number of morphoTogical characters that had not been studied in the Coreidae until now. As a result of this study, five valid names were removed from synonymy and reestablished as valid, 14 new species were described, two species were transferred to the genus Spilopleura Stål (new status), and three species were established as nomina dubia. According to these results, the genus Acanthocephala is composed of a total of 43 species. Finally, the monophyly of the genus was corroborated, the subgenus A. (Acanthocephala) andA. (Metapodiessa) Kirkaldy were reestablished as valid names, and three new subgenera were described.