Karyotypic Characteristics of the Ornithophilic Simulium aureum Species Group (Diptera: Simuliidae) Along the Northern Black Sea Coast and the Origin of Chromosomal Reduction

Abstract

The Simulium aureum group (Diptera: Simuliidae), also known as subgenus Eusimulium Roubaud, is a monophyletic, Holarctic taxon of bird-feeding black flies with a reduced chromosome number of two and remarkably similar external structure in all life stages. We analyzed the banding patterns of the polytene chromosomes to understand the composition of this species group along the northern coast of the Black Sea where two little-known nominal species have their type localities. Our analyses link the names Simulium krymense (Rubtsov) and Simulium maritimum (Rubtsov) with unique chromosomal characters, indicate that both are male chiasmate, and reveal the presence of Simulium angustipes Edwards along the northern coast of the Black Sea for the first time. We show that S. krymense has a banding sequence most similar to the hypothesized ancestral form of the S. aureum group, and that the entire group is derived from within the Simulium vernum group, rendering the latter group and its encompassing subgenus, Nevermannia Enderlein, paraphyletic.