Notoceratopogon, De Meillon & Downes, 1986

Borkent, Art, 2024, The Phylogeny of the Genera of Biting Midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) of the World, Zootaxa 5438 (1), pp. 1-274 : 229

Notoceratopogon :

- Female with their entire spermathecae wrinkled. This feature is nearly unique within the family. The condition was characterized by de Meillon & Downes (1986) as “with small blister-or bubble-like irregularities” and by Wirth & Grogan (1988) as “walls very irregular, not smoothly curving”.

Within the subgenus Culicoides ( Pontoculicoides Remm ) at least C. sejfadinei Dzhafarov has three wrinkled 3 spermathecae ( Glukhova 1989). The spermathecae of Capehelea also appear somewhat wrinkled but in this genus the bases of the spermathecae (the end where the spermathecal duct enters) are somewhat ridged transversely, a condition present in at least some Notoceratopogon (see discussion for this as a possible synapomorphy).

The markedly elongate spermathecae of Calyptopogon and some Macropeza are somewhat ridged longitudinally or are irregular at their tapering or have somewhat truncate bases. I consider these superficially similar to the condition in Notoceratopogon . Some Stenoxenus and some Paryphoconus have a spermatheca with an irregular surface (e.g. S. setiger Macfie ) more similar to those of Notoceratopogon but considering the phyletic distance between Stenoxenini and Notoceratopogon (and the virtual certainty that Stenoxenus and Stenoxenini is monophyletic), these are clearly not homologous conditions.