Taxonomia e filogenia do gênero Neotropical Synoestropsis Ulmer, 1905 (Trichoptera: Hydropsychidae)

Abstract

With nearly 1500 species Hydropsychidae is the third largest family of Trichoptera. The group is divided into five subfamilies, in which stands out Macronematinae encompassing the Macronematini and Polymorphanisini tribes. Synoestropsis is the only Neotropical genus belonging to Polymorphanisini with 10 described species ranging from northeastern Argentina to southern México. Some of Synoestropsis taxonomic problems are the absence of standardized descriptions and lack of diagnostic characters to enable reliable species differentiation. There is still few information about the immature stages in species level. There are some limitations among the traditional methods for rearing and associating larvae and adults, and the use of molecular tools such as “DNA barcoding”, can help to minimize the difficulty of associating life stages. Still, these data can be used for species separation and delimitation. The choice of collecting points aimed to encompass the genus geographical range. Along with the collected material, specimens from various institutions were examined. Larvae that were considered mature were reared to obtain the adults, thus aiding in morphological association. The extractions were performed with DNeasy ® Blood & Tissue kit, and after the completion of PCR and sequencing, the data was analyzed using the MEGA program with the following methods: Maximum Parsimony, Maximum Likelihood and Neighbor-joining. The confection of the data matrix was based on the external morphology of adults. Phylogenetic analysis were conducted with the TNT program based on the principle of maximum parsimony, with characters treated as unordered. Analysis with uniform weighting and differential weighing were performed. Four larvae/adult and five sex associations were obtained with molecular data. The topologies showed similar results between methods, with high support for larvae/adult and sex associations as well as species delimitation. However, support of clades regarding the relationship between species was not significant. A new species was described and associated with its respective larva and the larvae of S. pedicillata, S. grisoli and one unassociated larva morphotype were described. The result of codification produced a matrix with 24 characters based on adult morphology. The analysis corroborates the monophyly of Synoestropsis and a hypothesis of relationship among species is proposed.