Abstract
Bush Blitz is a three-year multimillion dollar program to document the plants and animals in hundreds of properties across Australia’s National Reserve System. The core focus is on nature discovery – identifying and describing new species of plants and animals. The Bush Blitz program has enabled the collection and description of beeflies (Diptera, Bombyliidae) from surveys in Western Australia and Queensland. Three new species of Australian beeflies belonging to the Exoprosopini are described; Palirika mackenziei Lambkin sp. n., Palirika culgoafloodplainensis Lambkin sp. n., and Larrpana bushblitz Lambkin sp. n. Phylogenetic analysis of 40 Australian exoprosopine species belonging to the Balaana generic-group Lambkin & Yeates 2003 supports the placement of the three new species into existing genera, and the erection and description of the new genus Ngalki Lambkin gen. n. for Ngalki trigonium (Lambkin & Yeates 2003) comb. n. Revised keys are provided for the genera of the Australian Balaana genus-group and the species of Palirika Lambkin & Yeates, 2003 and Larrpana Lambkin & Yeates 2003. With the description of the three new species and the transferral of Munjua trigona Lambkin & Yeates 2003 into the new genus Ngalki Lambkin gen. n., three genera are rediagnosed; Munjua Lambkin & Yeates 2003, Palirika and Larrpana.
Highlights
While there are more than 140,000 published species in Australia, more than 40 per cent of continental Australia has never been comprehensively surveyed by scientists
All three species belong to genera recently described (Palirika Lambkin & Yeates, 2003 and Larrpana Lambkin & Yeates, 2003) in a large revisionary monograph (Lambkin et al 2003) and can be described reasonably as all collected material has been examined recently, and the context for their description is in place
Previous phylogenetic analysis of the worldwide Exoprosopini showed that the Australian bombyliids that were previously placed in Exoprosopa Macquart 1840, belonged to the monophyletic Balaana group of genera, sister to the Australian Ligyra (Lambkin et al 2003)
Summary
While there are more than 140,000 published species in Australia, more than 40 per cent of continental Australia has never been comprehensively surveyed by scientists. Phylogenetic analysis of 207 morphological characters of the Balaana group of genera led to the description of seven new genera for 42 species in that genus-group in Lambkin et al (2003).
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