Oxyptilus secutor, MEYRICK, 1911

Alipanah, Helen, Gielis, Cees, Sari, Alireza, Sarafrazi, Alimorad & Manzari, Shahab, 2011, Phylogenetic relationships in the tribe Oxyptilini (Lepidoptera, Pterophoridae, Pterophorinae) based on morphological data of adults, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 163 (2), pp. 484-547 : 529

OXYPTILUS SECUTOR MEYRICK, 1911

Oxyptilus secutor Meyrick, 1911: 218 .

Oxyptilus variegatus Meyrick, 1920: 274 . syn. nov.

Material examined: Oxyptilus variegatus : 1 male, Republic of South Africa ( RSA), Natal Spioenkop , National Reserve, 12.ii.1995, leg. H. W. VD Wolf (coll. CG 11042 ). Oxyptilus secutor : no specimen was available for study .

Comments: According to our study, Oxyptilus variegatus and O. secutor are very similar to each other both in external and genital features. The only minor difference between them is in the shape of the distal margin of the specialized eighth sternite in males, which is considered to be an intraspecific variation. The sister group position of these two species in the consensus trees, as well as having strong tree supports ( Figs 16 , 17 ) confirms this synonymy.

Figures

Figure 16. Strict consensus trees of six equally most parsimonious trees obtained in the initial analysis using equally weighed characters. Numbers below the branches show Bremer support values and the capital letters show the clades included in Oxyptilini and are discussed in the text. Tree length = 943, consistency index = 0.4549, retention index = 0.7976.

Figure 17. Strict consensus trees of six equally most parsimonious trees obtained in the equally weighted analysis (left), and that of 380 most parsimonious trees obtained from successive approximation weighting based on maximum retention index values (right). Numbers above and below (underlined) the branches show bootstrap and jackknife values, respectively.