Sistemática de smicridea mclachlan, 1871 (trichoptera: hydropsychidae): taxonomia das espécies brasileiras do gênero e análise cladística de Smicridea (rhyacophylax) Müller, 1879

Abstract

Smicridea is the only genus of Smicrideinae present in the New World, being quite abundant and with high species richness in the Neotropical region. The genus is traditionally divided into two subgenera, the nominotypical and Rhyacophylax, which was reduced to the status of subgenus without a cladistic approach justifying this alteration. Likewise, species-groups were proposed for the subgenus by different authors and today seven groups are recognized. In Brazil, Smicridea is highly diverse, even so, its geographic distribution is little known, and its diversity may be underestimated for some regions of the country, historically undersampled. In view of this, this thesis sought to test the monophyletic condition of S. (Rhyacophylax) based on a cladistic analysis using morphological data and investigate its taxonomic limits in relation to the nominotypical subgenus. Concomitantly, we also sought to understand the Brazilian diversity of the genus through a taxonomic study. As a result of our investigations, 20 new species were discovered and described, nine of them belong to S. (Smicridea) and 11 to S. (Rhyacophylax), and new distribution records were provided for Brazil. Consequently, the geographic distribution of both subgenera was expanded within the national territory. After 100 years of its description, the adult male of S. (Smicridea) aequalis was redescribed, and the immature stages of this species were described for the first time. Finally, based on 100 morphological characters of adult males, pupae, and larvae and 120 species of Smicridea and related taxa, we investigated the taxonomic limits of S. (Rhyacophylax) and its species-groups. We performed an implicit weighing parsimony analysis to evaluate this dataset. Based on our results, S. (Rhyacophylax) was recovered as monophyletic and supported by nine synapomorphies, five being exclusive and all referring to the adult male. Regarding the species-groups of the subgenus, only the argentina, murina and radula groups were supported as monophyletic, but with low support values. Therefore, the subgeneric status of Rhyacophylax is corroborated, but it is redefined under a cladistic approach based only on the male adult.