Viana Jéssica Herzog, Roza André Silva, Vaz Stephanie, Powell Gareth, da Silveira Luiz Felipe Lima
Departamento de Ciências Naturais, Univresidade do Estado do Pará, Salvaterra, Pará, Brazil.
Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
PeerJ. 2025 Feb 19;13:e18967. doi: 10.7717/peerj.18967. eCollection 2025.
Lucidotini is a diverse tribe of lampyrine fireflies present throughout the New World, Europe, and Asia. Most of the over 30 genera have overlapping diagnoses, largely due to a lack of revisionary and phylogenetic studies. Widespread convergence in sensory morphology, traditionally used in genus-level diagnoses, further compounds the taxonomic issues surrounding the Lucidotini. Recent work has cast light on the value of terminalia and genitalic traits for Lucidotini taxonomy and called for a more thorough screening of morphological characters. Of special interest are basal outgrowths of the phallus (., ventrobasal processes)-currently only known in Kirsch and Laporte-that can be quite informative at the species level, but its variation within Lucidotini remains poorly studied. Most Lucidotini species remain only superficially described, while internal characters-including those of terminalia and genitalia-which could inform species identification and phylogenetic relatedness, remain unknown. Upon studying eight Lucidotini species superficially looking like and McDermott-all of which bearing long ventrobasal processes-we raised the hypothesis that they belonged to a genus yet to be recognized.
Here, we analyzed 97 morphological characters of 32 lampyrid species spanning 17 of 30 Lucidotini genera under Bayesian Inference.
We found evidence for the recognition and description of to include seven new species ( and ), in addition to Olivier ((transferred herein, thus generating ), for which we also designate a lectotype and two paralectotypes). This previously neglected lineage of Lucidotini spans four South American biomes: Amazon, Atlantic Rainforest, Cerrado, and Pampa. Interestingly, species span a gradient of morphologies related to signaling: from -style ventrally bulging eyes, tiny antennae and no lanterns; intermediate eyes and antennae, with complete lanterns as in ; to small eyes and long antennae and small lanterns as in many Laporte. was consistently found closely related to the three other Lucidotini taxa with ventrobasal processes (., , , and ). We provide an occurrence map of and a dichotomous key to species, thoroughly compare this genus with co-occurring Lucidotini genera, and suggest steps towards a revision of the Lucidotini tribe.
亮萤属是萤科萤亚科中一个多样化的类群，分布于整个新大陆、欧洲和亚洲。30多个属中的大多数属的诊断特征相互重叠，这主要是由于缺乏修订和系统发育研究。传统上用于属级诊断的感觉形态广泛趋同，进一步加剧了围绕亮萤属的分类学问题。最近的研究揭示了外生殖器和生殖器特征在亮萤属分类学中的价值，并呼吁对形态特征进行更全面的筛选。特别有趣的是阳茎的基部突出物（即腹基部突起）——目前仅在基尔希萤属和拉波特萤属中已知——在物种水平上可能具有很高的信息量，但其在亮萤属内的变异仍研究不足。大多数亮萤属物种仅得到表面描述，而内部特征——包括外生殖器和生殖器的特征——这些可以为物种鉴定和系统发育相关性提供信息的特征，仍然未知。在研究了八种表面上看起来像麦德莫特萤属的亮萤属物种后——所有这些物种都有长的腹基部突起——我们提出了一个假设，即它们属于一个尚未被认可的属。
在这里，我们在贝叶斯推断下分析了来自30个亮萤属中的17个属的32种萤科物种的97个形态特征。
我们发现有证据支持对新属的认可和描述，该属包括七个新物种（分别为[具体物种名1]、[具体物种名2]、[具体物种名3]、[具体物种名4]、[具体物种名5]、[具体物种名6]和[具体物种名7]），此外还有奥利维萤属（奥利维萤属在此处转移过来，从而产生[新组合名称]，我们还为其指定了一个选模标本和两个副选模标本）。这个以前被忽视的亮萤属谱系跨越了四个南美生物群落：亚马逊、大西洋雨林、塞拉多和潘帕斯草原。有趣的是，该属物种跨越了与信号传导相关的形态梯度：从具有腹侧凸出眼睛、微小触角且无发光器的[某种形态]；到具有中等大小眼睛和触角、像[某种形态]那样具有完整发光器的；再到像许多拉波特萤属那样具有小眼睛、长触角和小发光器的。该属一直被发现与其他三个具有腹基部突起的亮萤属类群（即[类群1]、[类群2]和[类群3]）密切相关。我们提供了该属的分布图和该属物种的二分检索表，将这个属与同域分布的亮萤属属进行了全面比较，并提出了修订亮萤属类群的步骤。
