Systematic Study On Phlaeobinae(Orthoptera:Caelifera: Acirdoidea: Acirdidae) From China

Phlaeobinae, a subfamily of Acrididae, belonging to Orthoptera, Caelifera, Acridoidea,distribute worldwide and was established by Dirsh V. M. in1975. Among which somemorphologically evolutionary taxa existed. The Systematics of the Phlaeobinae now remainssome arguments, and the establishment of its system is a hot spot in grasshopper systemicresearches. The taxa of Phlaeobinae from China was described in this thesis, and one newspecies, Phlaeoba nantouensis sp. nov. was found and described. Under the guide of Yin'grasshopper evolution theory, a new subfamily, Phlaeobidinae subfamily nov. in Acrididae,was established and further confirmed well with molecular data. All the results were as below.1. Systematics of Phlaeobinae from ChinaThe characteristic of the subfamily Phlaeobinae and the genus Phlaeoba were describedin detail, and the key to5genera and their species in the subfamily is given.23species inPhlaeobinae from China were described and illustrated. A new species Phlaeoba nantouensissp. nov. was found and described (Ye and Yin,2007). The morphological characteristics offemale of Phlaeoba medogensis Liu,1981was described for the first time. Another species,Phlaeoba formosana (Shiraki,1910), were also supplemented in the thesis, which were notrecorded in "Fauna sinica: Insect, Vol.32: Orthoptera: Acridoidea: Gomphoceridae andAcirididae".2. A new subfamily Phlaeobidinae subfam. nov. in AcrididaeIn1987, Academician Chen showed that to distinguish characters into original orevolutionary when working taxonomy ("Evolutionary theory and systematics" SciencesPress). In fossil of Protorthoptera, having long tegmen, so the long tegmen is an originalcharacter. Yin (1981) put forward the evolutional pathways of grasshoppers: long tegmina→short tegmina→without tegmina, stridulatory organ developed→degenerated→disappearedand tympanal organ developed→degenerated→disappeared ("Adaptations of grasshoppersand locusts in Qinghai-Xizang Plateau"), so taxa lacking tegmina and wing, lackingstridulatory organ and lacking tympanal organ are most evolved. Later, this viewpoint wasapplied well in "On the taxonomic system of Acridoidea from China"(Yin,1982) and "On thetaxonomic system of Eurasian Oedipodidae"(Yin and Wang,2005). More recently, Zhang et al (2012) published a new grasshopper genus Pacris Zhang et al. without tegmina and wing,stridulatory organ and tympanal organ and established a new subfamily, Pacrinae is a mostevolved taxas in Gomphoceridae. So they are confirmed the evolutionary theory ofgrasshoppers,4species in Phlaeobidinae from China were described.At present, the most evolved species without tegmina and wings, stridulatory organ andtympanal organ have not been found in Acrididae in the world. Based on short tegminapositioned laterally and without stridulatory organ in two genera, Phlaeobida Bolivar,1902and Sinophlaeobida Yin et Yin,2007, quite different from other genera in traditionalPhlaeobinae, we argued that the two genera are relative more evolutional taxa and establisheda new subfamily Phlaeobidinae in Acrididae. The type genus is Phlaeobida Bolivar,1902.The new subfamily includes Phlaeobida Bolivar,1902and Sinophlaeobida Yin et Yin,2007.Meanwhile, keys to genera in the new subfamily and subfamilies in Acrididae are given inthis paper.The establishment of new subfamily was supported by molecular data. We chosen cox2gene of4species of grasshoppers, Arcyptera coreana, Aeropus licenti, Acrida cinerea, andPhlaeoba albonema in the their total genome sequences of mitochondrion in GenBank,together with cox2gene from Phlaeobida carinata(PC), Phlaeobida hainanensis(PH)andPhlaeoba tenebrosa (PY) determined by ourselves, aligned these cox2gene sequences byusing bioinformatics softwares and established the molecular phylogenetic tree, whichshowed that the two species, Phlaeobida carinata and Phlaeobida hainanensis, in the newsubfamily was combined into a clade, generating a sister group with Acridinae, the sistergroup with Phlaeobinae composed another sister group. The phylogenetic tree also displayedthat Phlaeobidinae and Phlaeobinae do not compose a sister group directly, showingPhlaeobidinae has a closer relationship with Acridinae than Phlaeobinae.The establishment of the new subfamily Phlaeobidinae,based on the evolutional theory ongrasshoppers according to the evolutional pathways of some morphological characters, is anew research achievement, which further enrich evolutional theory on grasshoppers andperfect the systematic researches in Acrididae. Meanwhile,it has important theoretic value forus to understand the phylogenetic relationship between different taxa and the evolutionalrelationship among different taxa in the family Acrididae, especially it will direct the grasshopper researchers to find more taxa in the world for increasing species diversity in thenew subfamily.