The Australian Anthracini are revised. In all, 28 new species are described,
bringing the total fauna to 34 species. The previously described species of
Anthrax Scopoli –
A. maculatus Macquart,
A. incomptus Walker,
A. confluensisRoberts,
A. lepidiotus Roberts and
A. proconcisus Hardy – are diagnosed and the
following eight new species of Anthrax are described:
A. argentia, A. asciculus,
A. clinatus, A. crenatus,
A. dolabratus, A. funestus,
A. opacus and A. torulus. This
taxonomic study reveals a group of at least 20 cryptic species previously
included in collections under the name Anthrax angularis
Thomson. A new genus, Thraxan, is erected to contain
this cryptic group of species and the following 20 new species are described:
T. acutus, T. abditus,
T. caligneus, T. cinctus,
T. cornuatus, T. depressus,
T. echinatus, T. ebenus,
T. emicatus, T. hamulus,
T. luteus, T. misatulus,
T. nodus, T. norrisi,
T. obstipus, T. patielus,
T. planus, T. prolatus,
T. simulatusand T. spiculus. Many
of these cryptic species have been collected sympatrically, hill topping
together in eastern Australia. A key is provided to the species of
Anthrax and Thraxan, genitalia
drawings are presented for most species and distribution maps of all species
are presented. A cladistic analysis of the species of
Anthrax and Thraxan is also
presented. A total of 26 of the species is compared for 125 synapomorphies in
39 adult morphological characters. Three species-groups were found:
Thraxan, and two species-groups within
Anthrax, the A. proconcisus
species-group and the A. maculatusspecies-group.
Previous authors divided Anthrax into species-groups on
the basis of wing patterns, but found that these species-groups were not
confirmed when other characters were taken into consideration. We studied the
congruence of seven different character sets within the clade comprising
Anthrax and Thraxan –
antennae, venation, wing patterns, vestiture, genitalia, male genitalia and
female genitalia – using several incongruence indices. Significance of
incongruence was measured using a randomisation procedure. Results of these
studies indicate that the wing-pattern character set is significantly
incongruent with the other morphological data. These quantitative cladistic
results explain the difficulty previous authors experienced in finding suites
of characters to support species-groups in Anthrax on
the basis of wing patterns. A relationship is found between the level of
incongruence and the distance over which mate-recognition signals operate.