Dissertations and Theses
Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Amy Berkov
Second Advisor
David Grimaldi
Third Advisor
David Lohman
Keywords
fruit flies, lachryphagy, new species, saproxyly, sky islands, taxonomy
Abstract
Thorough biotic inventories are still needed even in families as seemingly well-studied as fruit flies (Diptera: Drosophilidae). Drosophilidae have had an outsize effect on the history of biology because of their pivotal role in the study of genetics, development, and evolution. Even with more than a century of intensive study, large gaps remain in our understanding of diversity in this fly family, including well-studied areas such as North America. This thesis presents a taxonomic revision of the Nearctic species of the genus Amiota Loew. Twenty-three species are identified as being new to science for publication at a later date. This increases the total species known in the Nearctic to 34. Amiota steganoptera Malloch is excluded from the Nearctic and Amiota setigera Malloch is synonymized under Amiota humeralis Loew. The taxonomic history of the Nearctic species is reviewed, and various aspects of their biology is presented, including larval saproxyly and adult lachryphagy. Morphological diagnoses are provided to define and separate each species, as are illustrations of male terminalia. Specimen-level distribution data is provided for each species. Limitations to the study of Amiota and future prospects are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Jones, Lance E., "More than meets the eye: A taxonomic revision of the Nearctic species in the eye-gnat genus Amiota Loew (Diptera: Drosophilidae)" (2020). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/848