New species in the Drosophila ananassae subgroup from northern Australia, New Guinea and the South Pacific (Diptera: Drosophilidae), with historical overview

Abstract

Three new Drosophila species are described in the ananassae subgroup from Australia, New Guinea and Samoa. Drosophila pandora sp.nov. and D. anomalata sp.nov. are morphologically very similar to the circumtropical species D. ananassae and are classified together in the ananassae complex. For 40 years D. pandora has been incorrectly identified as D. ananassae in the Australian tropics. The results of a detailed examination of the morphology of 1649 wild-caught ananassae-like male specimens, sampled from 60 islands from Southeast Asia to French Polynesia and 94 localities of northern Australia and western, central and eastern New Guinea, are reported. Comparisons are made with Afrotropical and Oriental samples to confirm the identity of D. ananassae s.str. Photomicrographs of the male terminalia and sex combs of D. ananassae and D. pandora from geographically distant localities demonstrate the stability of the important diagnostic characters. Males of D. anomalata, known only from three localities in Queensland, Australia, have a unique bobbing behaviour when courting, and they have the lowest total number of teeth in the sex combs. The distinctive male terminalia of related species D. atripex, D. monieri, D. ochrogaster, D. parapallidosa and D. pallidosa are figured for comparison. Among them, a species from Samoa, closely resembling the Fijian endemic species D. phaeopleura, is described here as Drosophila schugi sp.nov.