A new species of the genus Mesosmittia Brundin, 1956 (Diptera: Chironomidae) from the Neotropics with a cladistic analysis of the genus using quantitative characters

Abstract

The new species Mesosmittia museophila from the Neotropics is described and illustrated based on male imagines. A cladistic analysis was conducted in order to assess its possible relationships with the remaining species in the genus, and it was found that M. museophila is the sister group of M. mina Sæther and these two species are closely related to M. prolixa Sæther. This analysis suggests that standardization is preferable to use of raw data and the latter are preferable to any statistic descriptor.