Geometric Morphometric Analysis Of Wing Shape In Chinese Antlion And Taxonomic Review Of Four Genera(Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidea)

The analysis of biological shape is a fundamental area of insect systematic research. The traditional description and measurements usually give incomplete and redundant information about the shape of a biological structure. In recent years, there is a significant change in morphological analysis with advanced quantitative measurement. This revolution was called geometric morphometic which is more effective in capturing information about the shape and result in more powerful statistical procedures for testing differences among biological shapes. The application of GM can decrease the errors in measurement and improve the development of the systematic and taxonomyIn the beginning, the development of GM and research progresses of insect wing shape were reviewed. Then the geometry of wings of Myrmleontidae including5tribes,22genera,476specimens was analyzed for discussing the variation of intra-tribes.For testing sexual dimorphism of wing shape between male and female,9species with enough sample size of male and female were chosen for comparing wing shape. The results showed that there is no significant difference between male and female in Myrmeleontidae.In order to investigate the taxonomic value of wing shape, forewing and hindwing from16genera,28species,369specimens of Myrmeleontidae based on landmark-semilandmark and elliptical Fourier method were analyzed. The results of MANOVA based on landmark-semilandmark method showed that the wing shapes in both forewing and hind wing had significant difference between species (FW:Wilk’s Lambda=2.32E-08, F=52.72, p<0.01. HW:Wilk’s Lambda=2.19E-07, F=59.1, p<0.01). Hotelling’s pairwise comparision showed highly significant differences among308pairs of total378pairs and344pairs in forewing and hindwing, respectively. In cross validation test the proportion of forewings and hindwings correctly classified using elliptical Fourier method was54.5%and64.2%, respectively. It means that the outline of hindwings is more reliable than forewing in discriminant analysis. The proportion of forewings and hindwings correctly classified using landmark-semilandmark was86.2%and81.8%, respectively. It means that the analysis based on geometry of forewing is more accuracy than hindwing. The results indicated that the variation of landmarks is more than outline.There is a controversy over the taxonomic status of genus Layahima. In order to provide more evidence to its taxonomic status, wing shapes of species from tribe Myrmecaelurini, Dendroleontini and genus Layahima were analyzed by using landmark-semilandmark method. The cluster analysis based procrustes distance showed that the genus Layahima is clearly closer to the tribe Dendroleontini rather than tribe Myrmecaelurini. The results confirm that Layahima bleongs to tribe Dendroleontini.This research also focused on taxonomic review of four genera (Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae) from China. Based on type specimens and original description, some taxonomic problems were solved. The identification of Myrmeleon formicarius Linnaeus,1767and Dendroleon javanus Banks,1915which distributed widely in China were therefore erroneous. Further study showed that the correct name of these specimens is Myrmeleon trivialis Gerstaecker,1885which was newly recorded from China and Bullanga florida (Navas,1913), respectively.15species from4genera were described and re-described in detail, including2new species:Dendroleon falcatus Than&Wang,2012, Bankisus sparsus Zhan&Wang,2012. One new combination was confirmed:Hagenomyia littoralia (Miller&Stange,1999) comb. nov. The distribution map and revised keys of4genera were provided.