ABSTRACT. External morphology of the immature stages of Neotropical heliconians: VIII. Philaethria wernickei (Röber) (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae, Heliconiinae). The external features of egg, larva, and pupa of Philaethria wernickei (Röber, 1906) are described and illustrated, based upon light and scanning electron microscopy.

Carpocorini are the most diverse tribe within Pentatominae, comprising about 100 genera and 500 species, with the highest diversity found in the Neotropics. Within Carpocorini, some groups of genera have been, formally or informally, proposed based on morphological similarities and taxonomic history. The Euschistus group was informally proposed and comprises 20 genera, including Euschistus Dallas, 1851 and Dichelops Spinola, 1837. Both of these genera had their monophyly under dispute recently. Dichelops, which includes the species commonly known as the green‐belly stink bug, comprises 16 species in three subgenera, with an exclusively Neotropical distribution. The genus was revised recently, and for each subgenus, a set of distinct morphological characters was listed, which allow their precise identification. We tested the monophyly of the Euschistus group and of Dichelops under parsimony criteria using discrete and continuous characters and two‐character weighting methods. The Euschistus group was paraphyletic, and Dichelops was polyphyletic in every analysis, and the taxonomic characters formerly proposed as diagnostic for the genus and its subgenera were homoplastic. On the basis of the phylogenetic result, we propose the erection of Diceraeus Dallas, 1851, stat. rev. to the status of genus and Dichelops comprising two subgenera, the nominal and Prodichelops Grazia, 1978. This decision has implications for applied entomology, because species of Diceraeus are important crop pests in the Neotropics.

Neotropical passion‐vine butterflies in the tribe Heliconiini (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) are a major focus of research in ecology and evolution because of their diverse, aposematic wing patterns, extensive Müllerian mimicry, and coevolution with their Passifloraceae host‐plants. However, the basic taxonomy of this group, which is essential to evolutionary ecology research, has been built over the last two centuries using primarily gross morphological comparisons, with most species identification being based on wing colour pattern variation. For some taxa, such as the genus Philaethria Billberg, even the most basic information, such as species limits and geographical distributions, remains uncertain. Furthermore, descriptions of new species, within Philaethria and beyond, have generally been based on small sample sizes collected from a restricted area of the full geographical distribution. To address these issues in the genus Philaethria, here we used an integrative taxonomic approach involving both morphology (genitalia ultrastructure; linear and geometric morphometric analyses of wing shape) and molecular data (multilocus DNA sequence data and amplified fragment length polymorphisms). Specifically, we tested the taxonomic validity of two Philaethria species, Philaethria pygmalion and Philaethria wernickei, described in the literature as having disjunct distributions, corresponding to the Amazon Basin and the Atlantic Rain Forest of Brazil, respectively. Our analyses revealed that these two Philaethria species cannot be delimited and diagnosed using metric and nonmetric morphological characters. Furthermore, they occur in sympatry in the Cerrado biome of central Brazil, and appear to form a latitudinal cline in wing colour variation across their combined distribution. These results are further supported by limited genetic differentiation and a lack of reciprocal monophyly between Amazon and Atlantic Rain Forest populations based on DNA sequence data, and unstructured amplified fragment length polymorphism variation. Our combined results allow us to clarify species‐level limits within the genus Philaethria, whereby we propose that P. pygmalion is conspecific with P. wernickei (new synonym), and reassess the spatial range of P. wernickei by providing a refined mapping of its geographical distribution. Beyond clarifying the taxonomy of Philaethria, our results provide a solid, integrative framework that could be applied to fully characterize the taxonomy of other species in the Heliconiini and beyond. © 2014 The Linnean Society of London

Pentatomoidea is the third largest superfamily in Heteroptera. The internal systematics and classification of this superfamily have an intricate history. The paper by Grazia et al. (2008) is a milestone to the phylogenetic hypothesis of Pentatomoidea. Subsequent papers explored the limited conclusions and unanswered questions left by Grazia et al. (2008). We proposed to look at the body of knowledge produced since Grazia et al. (2008) and to compile the molecular data for Pentatomoidea deposited in Genbank to achieve three aims: (i) to evaluate the advances on the phylogenetic relationships of the Pentatomoidea; (ii) to produce a phylogenetic hypothesis based on molecular data deposited in Genbank; and (iii) to highlight the shortcomings and strengths of the available data. We retrieved sequences of four molecular markers (COI, 16S, 18S, and 28S) for 167 terminal taxa, including 149 pentatomoids. A concatenated matrix was analyzed under maximum likelihood (ML) and parsimony (MP). Both methods supported the monophyly of Pentatomoidea, and poorly resolved internal relationships among the families. Acanthosomatidae, Dinidordae, Pentatomidae, Scutelleridae, Thaumastellidae, and Urostylididae were monophyletic (under ML and MP), and also Plataspidae and Thyreocoridae (under ML). Tessaratomidae and Cydnidae were non-monophyletic under both methods. Our results were compared to the phylogenetic hypotheses proposed for Pentatomoidea. The analysis of the data available on the GenBank allowed us to affirm that many problems mentioned previously remain unsolved, even though the sampling of terminals has increased. In summary, the efforts in the last two decades to better understand the relationships within the Pentatomoidea have been insufficient to propose robust advances in phylogenetic hypothesis for the group. We discuss topics we understand are paramount to upcoming developments:1) better taxon sample; 2) collection management; 3) increased markers; and 4) morphology and anatomical ontology.

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