Aleksiana rasnitsyni gen. et sp. nov. (Diptera, Limoniidae) to honour Alexandr Rasnitsyn

Abstract

The family Limoniidae is the most speciose family of the infraorder Tipulomorpha, as well as one of the largest families of nematoceran Diptera. The oldest known representative of Limoniidae is Architipula youngi Krzemiński, 1992 described from the Upper Triassic of North America (ca. 208 Ma) belonging to the subfamily Architipulinae (Krzemiński, 1992). The subfamily Limoniinae (Limoniidae) stratigraphic range extends from the Lower Cretaceous Lebanese amber (Kania et al., 2014) to the present day, and is divided into two tribes, namely Antochini and Limoniini Savchenko (1985). Antochini currently comprise of the following contemporary genera: Antocha Alexander, 1924 (represented by 160 species); Elliptera Schiner, 1863 (represented by 12 species); Orimarga Osten-Sacken, 1869 (represented by 150 species) and Thaumastoptera Mik, 1866 (represented by 11 species). Representatives of this tribe currently occur on all continents except Antarctica, but individual genera are not distributed uniformly throughout the world (Oosterbroek, 2021). Although the family Limoniidae has been known since the Upper Triassic (Krzemińska & Krzemiński, 2003), the oldest representative of the tribe Antochini is only known from the beginning of the Upper Cretaceous from the Burmese amber from Kachin (Podenas & Poinar, 2009) dated to ca. 99 Ma (Shi et al., 2012).