Revision of the stiletto fly genera Acupalpa Kröber and Pipinnipons Winterton (Diptera, Therevidae, Agapophytinae) using cybertaxonomic methods, with a key to Australasian genera

Abstract

Australian stiletto flies of the sister-genera Acupalpa Kröber, 1912 and Pipinnipons Winterton, 2001 (Diptera: Therevidae: Agapophytinae) are revised. Twelve new species of Acupalpa are described, while Acupalpa imitans (White, 1915), comb. n. is transferred from Pipinnipons and Acupalpa albimanis (Kröber, 1914), comb. n. is transferred from Ectinorhynchus Macquart as a senior synonym of Acupalpa pollinosa Mann. The total number of species of Acupalpa is therefore increased to 19: A. albimanis (Kröber), comb. n., A. albitarsa Mann, A. boharti sp. n., A. divisa (Walker), A. dolichorhyncha sp. n., A. glossa sp. n., A. imitans (White), comb. n., A. irwini Winterton, A. melanophaeos sp. n., A. miaboolya sp. n., A. minuta sp. n., A. minutoides sp. n., A. notomelas sp. n., A. novayamarna sp. n., A. rostrata Kröber, A. semirufa Mann, A. westralica sp. n., A. yalgoo sp. n. and A. yanchep sp. n. Three new species of Pipinnipons are described, increasing the total number of species to five: P. chauncyvallis sp. n., P. fascipennis (Kröber), P. kampmeierae sp. n., P. kroeberi Winterton, and P. sphecoda sp. n. Pipinnipons and Acupalpa are rediagnosed in light of the new species presented herein and revised keys to species are included. A dichotomous key to genera of Australasian Therevidae is included. As an empirical example of cybertaxonomy, taxonomic descriptions were composed using a character matrix developed in Lucid Builder (in Structured Descriptive Data (SDD) format) to generate natural language descriptions supplemented by online specimen and image databases. Web resources are provided throughout the document including: a) links to high resolution colour images of all species on Morphbank, b) registration of authors, publications, taxon names and other nomenclatural acts in Zoobank, with assignment of Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) for each, c) links to Genbank accession records for DNA sequences, and d) assignment of LSIDs to specimen records with links to respective records in an online Therevidae specimen database. © Shaun L. Winterton.