Revision of the Neotropical genus Sturmiodexia Townsend, 1919 (Diptera: Tachinidae), with a new synonymy and combinations

What is it about?

Sturmiodexia Townsend is a genus of Tachinidae placed in Dexiini (Dexiinae) with 129 genera, of which, 73 have Neotropical distribution. The distinction between the former genus Platyrrhinodexia syn nov. of Sturmiodexia relies mainly on the difference of the ground colour of abdomen; this character is considered to be very poor and unreliable to support a generic distinction between these taxa and supports the hypothesis of the synonymy of Platyrrhinodexia syn nov. with Sturmiodexia. Moreover, two new combinations are assigned for Sturmiodexia: S. moyobambensis (Townsend, 1929) comb nov. and S. punctulata (Townsend, 1927) comb nov. The male and female terminalia, in addition to the first instar larva, are described and illustrated for the first time for S. punctulata. One of the main results of this work is that the Netropical Dexiini, now presenting 72 genera, is enhanced the taxonomic stability of Neotropical tachinid genera and it helps to mitigate the pernicious effect of the over-splitting made by early authors.

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