Thaumastellidae Seidenstucker Historical
Creators: name: Grazia, Jocelia
name: Schuh, Randall T.
name: Wheeler, Ward C.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2008
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hemiptera
Thaumastellidae

description: <i>THAUMASTELLIDAE Seidenstücker</i> Historical: The superfamilial position of this family group has been controversial since the time of its description. Having been originally placed in the Lyg- aeoidea, the Thaumastellidae was transferred to the Pentatomoidea at family rank by Štys (1964a) and later reduced to a subfamily of the Cydnidae by Dolling (1981) and Jacobs (1989). Jacobs (1989) mentioned the presence of a microchromosome (m-chromosome) in the Thaumastellidae, which is also present in many Coreoidea, Lygaeoidea, and Pyrrhocoroidea (Largidae). Henry (1997) suggested that the m-chromosome is a synapomorphy defining this broad group within the Pentatomomorpha, albeit lost in a few taxa (Berytidae, Lygaeinae, and Piesmatidae), and that the Thaumastellidae, due to the presence of an m-chromosome, may therefore not belong in the Pentatomoidea. Nonetheless, many apomorphies of the Pentatomoidea are found in the Thaumastellidae, including the presence of the foretibial apparatus, expanded mandibular plates, the base of the head not forming a ‘‘neck’’, post-ocular tubercles absent, the structure of the female genitalia, and the paired lateral trichobothria. <i>Analytical result</i>: Because of the controversy over placement of the Thaumastellidae, and their rarity in collections, we felt fortunate to be able to secure sequences of two species of <i>Thaumastella</i> Horváth, offering new evidence to test the relationships of the taxon. In our morphological analyses (Figs 42–44) the Thaumastellidae is placed within the Cydnidae, in conformity with the theory proposed by Dolling (1981), an unsurprising result. The strict consensus of molecular data with a 1: 1 cost ratio places the Thaumastellidae as the sister group of the Pentatomidae (Fig. 45); changing the cost ratio to 2: 2 places <i>Thaumastella</i> in a clade that includes the Urostylididae, Dinidoridae, Tessaratomidae, <i>Canopus</i>, and <i>Phloea</i> (Fig. 46). These results are more or less duplicated in the 52-taxon combined analyses (Figs 51 and 52), although there <i>Thaumastella</i> becomes the sister group of the Acanthosomatidae + Lestoniidae under a 1: 1 cost ratio (Fig. 51), rather than of the Pentatomidae. The 92-taxon combined analyses always place the Thaumastellidae in a clade containing most of the other ‘‘cydnoid’’ taxa (Figs 53–55). Although it seems abundantly clear that <i>Thaumastella</i> belongs within the Pentatomoidea, as opposed to the Lygaeoidea, because it never falls outside the ingroup in any of our analyses, we continue to maintain it at the family level, in the absence of a more clear-cut signal regarding the details of its phylogenetic placement within the group, and more particularly a more rigorous test of the monophyly of the Cydnidae <i>sensu</i> Dolling. Morphological features treated as diagnostic for the Thaumastellidae in our analyses are the short scutellum that at most barely surpasses the posterior margin of the metathorax (160) and the claval commissure reduced, being no more than half the length of the scutellum (171).
description: Published as part of <i>Grazia, Jocelia, Schuh, Randall T. &amp; Wheeler, Ward C., 2008, Phylogenetic relationships of family groups in Pentatomoidea based on morphology and DNA sequences (Insecta: Heteroptera), pp. 932-976 in Cladistics 24</i> on pages 966-967, DOI: 10.1111/j.1096-0031.2008.00224.x, http://zenodo.org/record/3968591
description: {"references": ["Stys, P., 1964 a. Thaumastellidae - a new family of pentatomoid Hemiptera. Acta Soc. Entomol. Cechoslov. 61, 236 - 253.", "Dolling, W. R., 1981. A rationalized classification of the burrower bugs (Cydnidae). Syst. Entomol. 6, 61 - 76.", "Jacobs, D. H., 1989. A new species of Thaumastella with notes on the morphology, biology and distribution of the two southern African species (Heteroptera: Thaumastellidae). J. Entomol. Soc. S. Afr. 52, 301 - 316.", "Henry, T. J., 1997. Phylogenetic analysis of family groups within the infraorder Pentatomomorpha (Hemiptera: Heteroptera), with emphasis on the Lygaeoidea. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 90, 275 - 301."]}