A new species of Protopsychoda Azar et al., 1999 from the Lower Cretaceous Lebanese amber (Diptera: Psychodidae)

Abstract

Psychodidae Newman, 1834 is a large family of small, hairy nematoceran dipterans, comprising more than 2,600 described extant species. It is currently subdivided into seven subfamilies: Bruchomyiinae Alexander, 1920, Horaiellinae Enderlein, 1936, Phlebotominae Rondani, 1840, Psychodinae Newman, 1834, Sycoracinae Jung, 1954, Trichomyiinae Tonnoir, 1922, and the fossil subfamily Protopsychodinae Stebner et al., 2015. Some authors consider the group to consist of two families, i.e., Psychodidae and Phlebotomidae (Williams, 1993; Azar et al., 1999). This fact is founded only on the hematophagous and medically important aspects of the phlebotomines, nevertheless this arrangement is unfounded, because the phylogenetic relationships between the psychodid subfamilies remain unresolved, even if there is a possible sister-group relationship between the Phlebotominae and Psychodinae (Curler & Moulton, 2012). We consider recognizing phlebotomines as a separate family would necessitate also giving separate familial status to all the currently recognized subfamilies, which is not adopted here.