Polyphyly of Lordiphosa and its relationships in Drosophilinae (Diptera : Drosophilidae)

The phylogenetic relationships of Lordiphosa and some taxa in Drosophilinae were analysed on the basis of a total of forty-one selected drosophilid sp ecies. These included eighteen species of five Lordiphosa species groups as the main target, twenty-three species representative of the major drosophi line ingroup taxa and four species of Steganinae as outgroup. Sixty-eight m orphological characters of adults were subjected to cladistic analysis. Fro m the results it is concluded that Lordiphosa is polyphyletic; the Lo. tenu icauda species-group and genus Nesiodrosophila form a single monophyletic g roup; Lordiphosa propel (i.e. Lordiphosa spp. minus the tenuicauda group) c omprises another monophyletic group; within Lordiphosa proper the fenestrar um, nigricolor and denticeps groups are all monophyletic, but monophyly of the miki group is not strongly supported; genera Hirtodrosophila and Scapto myza and subgenus Sophophora are all monophyletic; and within Drosophilinae , genus Scaptodrosophila is the first to have split from the main lineage, but the branching order of other clades, Chymomyza, Lordiphosa proper, Soph ophora, Hirtodrosophila, Nesiodrosophila + Lo. tenuicauda group, Scaplomyza , Dorsilopha and subgenus Drosophila, remains unresolved. The topology of m aximum parsimony cladograms suggests that Lordiphosa proper lies close to S ophophora as proposed previously, although its phylogenetic position could not be determined conclusively. By contrast, bootstrap values tended to con tradict another hypothesis that Lordiphosa and Scaptomyza are sister groups .