ARPHA Preprints, doi: 10.3897/arphapreprints.e107530
Description of the female of Atherimorpha latipennis Stuckenberg 1956 (Diptera, Rhagionidae): the first record of brachyptery in Rhagionidae
John Mark Midgley‡§|, Burgert Smith Muller¶‡ KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa§ Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa| Albany Museum, Grahamstown, South Africa¶ National Museum, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Corresponding author: John Midgley ( johnmidge@gmail.com ) © John Midgley, Burgert Muller. This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Midgley JM, Muller BS (2023) Description of the female of Atherimorpha latipennis Stuckenberg 1956 (Diptera, Rhagionidae): the first record of brachyptery in Rhagionidae. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e107530 |  |
Abstract
The Genus Atherimorpha White 1915 is a Gondwanan relic, occurring in South America, Southern Africa and Australia. Females are rarely collected and in more than half of the known species are not described. The female of Atherimorpha latipennis Stuckenberg 1956 was collected for the first time in 2021 and is described here, along with a redescription of the male. We describe the differences from the male, with the reduced wings and poorly defined scutellum the most noteworthy. The female of A. latipennis represents the first recorded case of brachyptery in the Rhagionidae. Possible drivers of brachyptery in Afrotropical Diptera are briefly discussed.
Keywords
Aptery, snipe flies, taxonomy, Lesotho