Parastrachiinae Schaefer, Dolling and Tachikawa
Creators: name: Grazia, Jocelia
name: Schuh, Randall T.
name: Wheeler, Ward C.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2008
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hemiptera
Corimelaenidae

description: <i>PARASTRACHIINAE Schaefer, Dolling and Tachikawa</i> <i>Historical</i>: Schaefer et al. (1988) treated the Asian <i>Parastrachia</i> Distant as a subfamily within the Cydni- dae. More recently, Sweet and Schaefer (2002) elevated <i>Parastrachia</i> to family status, arguing that it did not share diagnostic features with either the Cydnidae, or the Pentatomidae, where some authors had placed the group. The characters supporting <i>Parastrachia</i> as distinct from the Cydnidae are: venation of the fore wings (base of membrane with large basal cells formed by cross veins), stridulatory apparatus differing from that of most Cydnidae and resembling that of the Amnestinae (Cydnidae), metathoracic scent gland area with a reduced spout above the ostiole, dorsum of the abdo- men relatively desclerotized, epipleurites absent, and several unique features in the female and male genitalia (Schaefer et al., 1988). Sweet and Schaefer (2002) placed the Parastrachiidae only within the ‘‘cydnoids or lower pentatomoids’’, arguing that inclusion of <i>Parastrachia</i> within the Cydnidae produces a grouping that cannot be diagnosed. <i>Analytical result</i>: Our analyses suggest that <i>Parastrachia</i> Distant and <i>Dismegistus</i> Amyot &amp; Serville form a monophyletic group, an issue that has not been addressed in most of the recent—and rather extensive—literature on <i>Parastrachia</i>. For the characters included in our morphological matrix, these two taxa receive the same coding, so this result represents a foregone conclusion. Nonetheless, molecular data—adduced here for both <i>Dismegistus</i> and <i>Parastrachia</i> —support this same conclusion, as do the total evidence analyses. We therefore broaden the concept of Sweet and Schaefer (2002) for the Parastrachiinae to include <i>Dismegistus</i>. Our morphological analyses (Figs 42–44) always place <i>Parastrachia</i> + <i>Dismegistus</i> within a broadly conceived Cydnidae, in a sense similar to that used by Dolling (1981), on the basis of characters 160, 261, and 271. As noted above, the molecular data alone and combined analyses of 52 taxa usually group <i>Parastrachia</i> and <i>Dismegistus</i> with <i>Allocoris</i> (Corimelaenidae) and with equal consistency with one of the sequenced taxa we have treated as Cydninae. The combined analyses of 92 taxa places some additional cydnoid taxa with the <i>Parastrachia</i> clade, but notably—and consistently—exclude two cydnines and <i>Thaumastella</i>. Thus, we conclude that <i>Parastrachia</i> + <i>Dismegistus</i> is a monophyletic group, and that its inclusion in a broadly conceived Cydnidae may well render that group paraphyletic, a conclusion in concordance with the findings of Sweet and Schaefer (2002). That particular conclusion does not preclude our recommendation that the Parastrachiinae be treated as part of a more broadly conceived Corimelaenidae. Whether the Sehirinae should also be included as part of the grouping may be clarified through the inclusion of additional sequence data, not only for the Sehirinae, but also for the Corimelaeninae.
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 965-966, DOI: 10.1111/j.1096-0031.2008.00224.x, http://zenodo.org/record/3968591
description: {"references": ["Schaefer, C. W., Dolling, W. R., Tachikawa, S., 1988. The shieldbug genus Parastrachia and its position within the Pentatomoidea (Insecta: Hemiptera). Zool. J. Linnean Soc. 93, 283 - 311.", "Sweet, M. H., Schaefer, C. W., 2002. Parastrachiinae (Hemiptera: Cydnidae) raised to family level. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 95, 441 - 448.", "Dolling, W. R., 1981. A rationalized classification of the burrower bugs (Cydnidae). Syst. Entomol. 6, 61 - 76."]}