Dacinae

Overview of subfamily Dacinae

The subfamily Dacinae contains three tribes— Ceratitidini , Gastrozonini and Dacini —united by larval characters, particularly the usual presence of a ridge on the ventral tubercle of the caudal segment ( Kovac et al. 2006) and presence of only two spermathecae. The primarily Afrotropical tribe Ceratitidini and primarily Oriental tribe Gastrozonini both have a semicircular (and sometimes slightly to moderately swollen) scutellum and are currently separated on host plant use—fruit in Ceratitidini and stems/shoots of Poaceae (especially Bambusoideae ) in Gastrozonini . However, the latter is likely to be paraphyletic, with some genera, particularly the Afrotropical panicoid grassfeeding Bistrispinaria Speiser and its close allies Clinotaenia Bezzi and Leucotaeniella Bezzi , which have simple, non-coiled and subovate spermathecae ( Hancock 1985) and distinct whitish-tomentose bands on abdominal tergites II and IV; these characters are likely to be basal to the Ceratitidini , many species of which also have these bands. They also occur in the Oriental genera Anoplomus Bezzi and Proanoplomus Shiraki , but whether they belong in Ceratitidini or Gastrozonini remains unclear; at least Anoplomus has densely coiled spermathecae, an enlarged proctiger and breeds in bamboo. It is possible that the whitish-tomentose abdominal bands is a character shared by both ancestral Ceratitidini and Gastrozonini . Current molecular (CO1) phylogenies ( e.g. David et al. (2021, 2022) lack relevant genera and are generally incompatible with morphology.