The genus Plecia (Diptera: Bibionidae) in middle Miocene Dominican amber

ABSTRACT

Two new species of the genus Plecia (Diptera: Bibionidae) are described. The only occurrence of the genus Plecia in the Miocene amber of Dominican Republic was formerly identified as P. pristina, a species having previously been described in the Mexican Miocene fauna. The Dominican specimen is hereby studied again and attributed to a new species, Plecia jorgecaridadi n. sp., alongside another new species, Plecia surieli n. sp.

KEYWORDS:

• Bibionidae
• Plecia
• Miocene
• Dominican amber

Acknowledgments

We thank Jorge Caridad (World Amber Museum, Santo Domingo) and his family for the loan of the piece MNHNSD FOS 17.02 for studying purposes, and for its donation to the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural “Prof. Eugenio de Jesús Marcano”, Santo Domingo. We are also grateful to Robin Kunz (Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt) for his technical support on preparation of the amber material and segmentation of the SRµ-CT scans. We thank Carlos Suriel (Museo Nacional de Historia Natural “Prof. Eugenio de Jesús Marcano”) for the management of the amber collection, Michael W. Rasser (Staatliches Museum fuer Naturkunde Stuttgart) for the loan of the piece Do-1367-K, Analena Mrotzek for helping drawing Figure 5g. We are also really thankful to Ashley Dineen and Diane Erwin (UCMP Berkeley) for their valuable help concerning the holotype of P. pristina. Finally, we thank François Rosse for his valuable help regarding databases.

Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper. Correspondence and material related to this paper may be requested from Mónica M. Solórzano-Kraemer ([email protected]). Nomenclatural acts established herein are registered in ZooBank (www.zoobank.org), as required by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and under the LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:FC23D306-11DB-4694-A291-CFAFCDD3A9D9.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study is a contribution to the German VolkswagenStiftung [Project N. 90946], and the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg [BAG-20190010].