A revision of the genus Chionomus Fennah (Hemiptera: Fulgoroidea: Delphacidae) : cleaning out Delphacodes Fieber
Date
2012
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The original description of Chionomus Fennah, 1971 placed three Neotropical species from the problematic and polyphyletic genus Delphacodes Fieber, 1866 within the taxon. Morphological evidence and recent molecular analyses suggest that additional Delphacodes species are allied with Chionomus. Here Chionomus is redescribed; the definition is broadened to include 10 new species, bringing the total number of valid species to 13. Eight species are moved from the genus Delphacodes, two new species are described, and an additional four species are synonymized. Phylogenetic analyses of morphological and molecular sequence data, from the mitochondrial gene Cytochrome Oxidase I, for 6 ingroup and 5 outgroup taxa in the Delphacini provide support for the monophyly of Chionomus as described here. Phylogenetic analyses were performed using 3 optimality criteria (Maximum Likelihood, Maximum Parsimony, and mixed model Bayesian). All analyses support paraphyly of the original definition of Chionomus and monophyly of the revised genus. The maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses suggest the same ingroup branching pattern of C. tenae (C. puellus ((C. haywardi + C. pacificus) + (C. havanae + C. balboae)).