Phylogenetic relationships among genera of the tribe Cnephasiini (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae: Tortricinae) based on morphological characters of adults

Abstract

A phylogenetic analysis was conducted on the moth tribe Cnephasiini based on 83 morphological characters of adults (63 binary and 20 multistate). The analysis included 26 species representing 20 genera, plus two outgroup representatives of the tribe Tortricini. The cladistic analysis resulted in the 10 most parsimonious trees. The tribe Cnephasiini was recovered as monophyletic; the genus Cnephasia was not recovered as monophyletic; the New World Decodes clustered with the primarily Old World Cnephasia; Oxypteron is best treated as monotypic (with the single species palmoni), and Amphicoecia adamana, Oporopsamma dunaria and O. wertheimsteini should be assigned to a different genus; Propriomorpha and Xerocnephasia were the most basal groups; Exapate duratella and Epicnephasia mongolica were recognised as sister-groups; and Kawabeia was closest to Tortricodes.

Keywords:

• Lepidoptera
• Tortricidae
• Tortricinae
• Cnephasiini
• cladistic analysis
• morphological characters

Acknowledgements

This study would not have been possible without the kind help of John Brown (Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA, c/o National Museum of Natural History, Washington, USA). We greatly appreciate the loan of essential material and his constructive comments during the study. His meticulous reviewing did much to improve the paper. We express our gratitude to Marianne Horak (Division of Entomology, CSIRO, Australia) for her valuable suggestions on the manuscript and her careful reading and editing of part of the manuscript. We are grateful to Shahab Manzari (Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, Tehran, Iran) for editing the discussion part of the manuscript. Our special thanks go to Juaquin Baixeras (Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, Spain) for the loan of some material and delivering the loaned material of USDA to Iran. We are greatly indebted to Jan Sumpich (Ceska Bela, Czech Republic), Pasquale Trematerra (Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences, University of Molise, Campobasso, Italy), Jozef Razowski (Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland), Peter Huemer (Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdindeum, Naturwissenschaftliche Sammkungen, Innsbruck, Austria) and Leif Aarvik (Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Norway) for loan of some material. We also thank Kevin Tuck (Entomology Department, The Natural History Museum, London) for his assistance in this study. The authors would like to thank to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. The study was supported by the Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection (IRIPP).