Taophila (Lapita)

TAOPHILA (LAPITA) GAEA GÓMEZ-ZURITA, 2014

In the course of the current study, we have not found any additional specimens ascribable to T. gaea , besides the series from Canala that was studied to recognize and describe this species ( Gómez-Zurita & Cardoso, 2014). We here take the opportunity to note that in the article with the original description, there was an error in the caption to figure 3, so that the names of T. mars and T. gaea were swapped ( Gómez-Zurita & Cardoso, 2014: 117). Moreover, for comparative purposes, we placed this species in context with the remaining species of the subgenus relative to the apical profile of elytra and chromatic patterns of legs and antennae ( Fig. 2K).

MTDNA DATA AND SPECIES RELATIONSHIPS

A total of 39 specimens of the subgenus Lapita of Taophila , including representatives of all the new species hypothesized in this work and new samples of T. aphrodita and T. mars , were tested for their DNA and some proved effective for amplification of short mtDNA fragments ( Table 1). A 403-nucleotide segment of COI was successfully sequenced in 15 specimens, while a 510–516-nucleotide long rrnS segment was obtained from 18 specimens. Only 30.8% of the specimens analysed yielded sequences for both markers, but 56.4% produced some useful sequence data and they included at least one representative of every species known to date.

The phylogenetic tree supported the species hypotheses based on morphology, remarkably in the case of species for which there was already information available, so that the new specimens had identical or similar haplotypes to these already published ( Fig. 8). The obtained tree topology was apparently naturally unbalanced with most nodes receiving high support, except those representing soft polytomies in the clade of species with strongly sinuous costae on the elytra of females, and also the relationships within the clades of T. gaea , T. oceanica and T. ouranos on the one hand and T. aphrodita , T. atlantis and T. kronos on the other. The first split in the phylogeny separated, with relatively high bootstrap support (BS> 80%), the species T. tridentata from all the other species with only two lateral teeth on the sides of pronotum. The next split separated two clades, one with the pair T. hermes and T. olympica , and the other with all the other species, characterized among other things, as mentioned, by their females showing a characteristic sigmoid costa laterally on elytra. The clock-constrained Bayesian tree using a single representative sequence per species showed the same structure and relationships, but with comparatively lower posterior probability (PP = 0.65) for the first split separating T. tridentata from the other Lapita , effectively resulting in a basal trichotomy in the tree, and conversely with higher support (PP = 0.88–0.91) defining two distinctive clades among the species with sinuous costae on the elytra of females ( Fig. 11).