Diversity of one of the open-ended taxa in Diptera: the genus Manota Williston (Diptera, Mycetophilidae) in Brazil

Abstract

The family Mycetophilidae is the second most speciouse in the Bibionomorpha, with 233 genera and about 4,500 described species from all biogeographic regions. The monophyly of the Bibionomorpha and the Mycetophilidae is well corroborated. There are some hypotheses for the phylogenetic relationships between the subfamilies as Sciophilinae, Gnoristinae, Mycomyiinae, Leiinae, Manotinae, Allactoneurinae and Mycetophilinae, but this is still a pending issue. The diversity of the subfamily Manotinae is one of the less well studied in the Neotropical region. Known from the genera Eumanota Edwards, Paramanota Tuomikoski, Promanota Tuomikoski and Manota Williston, it is known from the Neotropical region only from species of this latter genus. A typical case of hidden biodiversity, the genus Manota before the early 1970s was known from three Neotropical species and from other eight species from the rest of the world. Ever since, almost two hundred species have been described from different parts of the world, of which 48 from the Neotropical region from a limited number of localities from Costa Rica, Equador, French Guiana, Mexico, and Argentina. There are strong indications of the existence of a huge number of species to be described from various parts of the Neotropical region, including the Atlantic Forest and Amazonia. This project intends to bring one of the most important authorities in the world in the systematics of the genus Manota to work on material accumulated in recent years, especially of the Atlantic Florest, willing to: (1) describe new species of the genus from different parts of Brazil and from Colombia; and (2) to identify distribution patterns of the species of the genus in the region. (AU)