Revisiting the genus Aethaloptera Brauer (Trichoptera, Hydropsychidae, Macronematinae): new species and records

Abstract

The taxonomic potential of speciation traits, the adaptive structural components of the phallic head that build the early stages of reproductive barriers was applied in our first revision of the Aethaloptera genus with unsettled obscured taxonomy. The present paper complements the first revision and is based on the examination of the historical Aethaloptera collection of the Natural History Museum, London. The difficulty of presenting the tiny, subtle, but stable divergences in the speciation traits is discussed. The presented graphical copy of phenomic reality delineates species reliably if the matrices of the drawings from various populations, clearly visualizes empirically, without geometric morphometrics, that the detected shape divergences are larger than the combined variation ranges of the artefacts and of the infra-populations. Based upon the lateral profiles of the phallic head two new species complexes: A. dispar and A. maxima and four new species have been described: A. nulta sp. nov., A. pipa sp. nov., A. feltora sp. nov. and A. pricei sp. nov.

Keywords

• Speciation trait
• phallic head
• new species