Megalabops spp.

Megalabops spp.

Distribution: Records for Megalabops spp. (as Teleopsis quadriguttata (Walker)) point to a northern Indian distribution: Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Asom, Meghalaya, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.

Remarks: The synonymy of Teleopsis and Megalabops , proposed by Steyskal (1972) and supported by Feijen (1989, 1998) and Baker et al. (2001), was rejected by Feijen (2011). Based on the molecular analysis by Baker et al. (2001), Feijen (2011) proposed to maintain Teleopsis s.str. and Cyrtodiopsis s.str. as separate genera and to reinstate a revised genus Megalabops as the sister group of Cyrtodiopsis . Frey (1928) did not produce a formal diagnosis for Megalabops . Only in his key to the genera he indicated a few minor and incorrect differences from Teleopsis . A proper revision of Megalabops (with Diopsis quadriguttata Walker, 1857 as the type species) with a formal diagnosis is still pending. Besides the results of the DNA analyses, there are strong morphological reasons for its resurrection. All Megalabops species are, for instance, homomorphic with regard to the eye span and have very long IVS and OVS. Almost all Teleopsis are dimorphic, exceptions being the very aberrant Teleopsis selecta Osten Sacken and Teleopsis sexguttata Brunetti. The peculiar shape of the phallapodeme forms another important character of Megalabops . An interesting character was also indicated by Kotrba et al. (2013): “the spermathecal ducts have a short, strongly convoluted portion just before they enter the base of the spermathecal capsules.” From Baker et al. (2001), it was already clear that supra-alar spines developed convergently in Teleopsis s.str. and Megalabops .

External differences among Megalabops species are minor. Therefore, many species were lumped together as Megalabops (or Teleopsis ) quadriguttata (see Steyskal 1972). We have already studied genitalia of Megalabops for specimens from India to Taiwan. Genitalia give useful differential characters in Megalabops , especially the surstyli in lateral view ( Figs 26–29). It is now clear that its type species M. quadriguttata has a distribution extending from Peninsular Malaysia to Vietnam, but does not occur in India. Teleopsis bigotii Hendel, 1914 from Taiwan was earlier treated as a synonym of M. quadriguttata ( Hennig 1941 a) , but is clearly a distinct species: Megalabops bigotii ( Hendel, 1914) , n. comb. Two Teleopsis species from China also fall under the resurrected Megalabops : Megalabops cheni ( Yang & Chen, 1998) , n. comb. and Megalabops yunnana ( Yang & Chen, 1998) , n. comb. Most of the six Teleopsis described by Liu et al. (2013) from China also probably belong to Megalabops .

In India, a number of undescribed species are found, especially in the northern states. Up till now these species were clustered under the name Teleopsis quadriguttata ( Joseph & Parui 1972: 337; Datta & Biswas 1985: 221; Datta & Parui 1999: 31, 2004: 464; Mitra & Bhattacharya 2010: 394; Kotrba et al. 2013: 190; Mitra et al. 2015: 60).