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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 23(1)

Phylogeny and generic concepts of the parasitoid wasp family Aulacidae (Hymenoptera: Evanioidea)

Giuseppe F. Turrisi A D , John T. Jennings B and Lars Vilhelmsen C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A University of Catania, Department of Animal Biology ‘Marcello La Greca’, via Androne 81, I-95124, Catania, Italy.

B Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.

C Zoological Museum, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark.

D Corresponding author. Email: turrisifabrizio@yahoo.it

Invertebrate Systematics 23(1) 27-59 https://doi.org/10.1071/IS08031
Submitted: 19 August 2008  Accepted: 28 January 2009   Published: 31 March 2009

Abstract

The results of the first phylogenetic investigation of members of the Aulacidae of the world are presented. The main objective was to test the monophyly of the currently recognised genera. In total, 79 morphological characters were scored for a substantial sample of the extant aulacid fauna, including 72 species, as well as 12 outgroup taxa belonging to Evaniidae, Gasteruptiidae, Megalyridae, Trigonalidae, Braconidae and Stephanidae. All zoogeographic regions were represented. The dataset was analysed under different conditions (ordered, unordered, equal and implied weighting). The results under different weighting conditions are not fully congruent and many relationships remain unresolved. However, the analyses demonstrate that the current generic classification of the Aulacidae is not a natural one. There is support for a very large, monophyletic clade which includes all Pristaulacus Kieffer spp. + Panaulix Benoit spp. This suggests a wider generic concept for Pristaulacus, which is redefined and rediagnosed here. As a consequence, Panaulix becomes a junior synonym of Pristaulacus (syn. nov.), and the two described species of Panaulix are transferred to Pristaulacus: Pristaulacus rex (Benoit, 1984), comb. nov., and Pristaulacus irenae (Madl, 1990), comb. nov. The genus Aulacus Jurine was consistently paraphyletic and is not valid as currently defined. Furthermore, we failed to retrieve a consistent topology among the different clades of Aulacus. A satisfactory reclassification of Aulacus, however, requires a much more comprehensive taxon sample and/or additional character data.


Acknowledgements

The Willi Hennig Society is kindly acknowledged for access to TNT software. We are grateful to Prof. Dr Klaus Schönitzer (Zoologische Staatssammlung München, Germany) and to Prof. Dr Matthias Starck (Zoological Institute of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany) for allowing us to produce the SEM micrographs. We are also grateful to the curators of the numerous museums and colleagues who provided material for this study (see list in the section ‘Materials and methods’). Two anonymous referees provided useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This research has been partly supported by the University of Catania, Fondo Ricerca d’Ateneo (ex 60%) to G. F. T. and an Australian Biological Resources Study grant to J. T. J.


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Appendix 1.  Data matrix for the parasitoid wasp family Aulacidae
– = unknown, A = polymorphic state 0 & 1
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Appendix 2.  Diagnosis and redescription of the genus Pristaulacus Kieffer
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Appendix 3.  Updated checklist of the world Aulacidae
Only the most recently proposed synonymies are reported. The symbol (†) refers to extinct species
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