Abstract
On the basis of new survey, knowledge of Australia’s heteropteran fauna has been shown to have a significant taxonomic impediment, requiring the description of many new lineages. In this work we provide a monographic treatment of the lace bug genus Epimixia, including a phylogenetic analysis validating its monophyly. We redescribe the genus and previously described species E. alitophrosyne Kirkaldy, E. nigriceps (Signoret), E. nigripes dysmica Drake & Ruhoff, E. nigripes nigripes (Horváth), E. veteris Drake, E. vittata Horváth and E. vulturna (Kirkaldy). Eighteen new species are described, including the first recorded species from Papua New Guinea (E. gagnei, sp. nov.), a second species from New Caledonia (E. fulva, sp. nov.) and 16 new Australian species (E. aboccidente, sp. nov., E. acclivis, sp. nov., E. albimons, sp. nov., E. allocasuarina, sp. nov., E. bicolor, sp. nov., E. caerulamons, sp. nov., E. christopherdarwini, sp. nov., E. eneabba, sp. nov., E. kimberley, sp. nov., E. leai, sp. nov., E. megacosta, sp. nov., E. minor, sp. nov., E. pilbara, sp. nov., E. schuhi, sp. nov., E. tropica, sp. nov. and E. verticordiaphila, sp. nov.). Epimixia dysmica Drake & Ruhoff is elevated to species rank, from its previous subspeciefic status within E. nigripes. This work also reports host plants for Epimixia, predominantly belonging to the Casuarinaceae, with a handful of species associated with the Myrtaceae, Proteaceae and Fabaceae. Host plants are mapped to the Epimixia phylogeny, indicating that the Casuarinaceae-affiliated Epimixia species form a subclade. Area relationships of the Epimixia species are analysed using subtree analysis, resulting in the south-west and south-east corners of Australia being sisters, relative to the Adelaide subregion, and in turn to Atherton + New Caledonia. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:E7FC4E37-517D-4AB7-A918-B9104D63AB25
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