Glenoleon Banks, 1913

Machado, Renato Jose Pires & Oswald, John David, 2020, Morphological phylogeny and taxonomic revision of the former antlion subtribe Periclystina (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae: Dendroleontinae), Zootaxa 4796 (1), pp. 1-322 : 156-157

Glenoleon Banks, 1913

Platyleon Esben-Petersen, 1923 , new synonym.

Type species. Glenoleon : Myrmeleon pulchellus ( Rambur, 1842) , by original designation. Nomenclatural gender: masculine. Platyleon : Platyleon froggatti Esben-Petersen, 1923 , by original designation. Nomenclatural gender: masculine.

Diagnosis. Ocular setae absent; tibial spurs present; profemur>3.5 times length of procoxa; pronotum longer than wide; female lateral gonapophysis smaller than ectoproct; female posterior gonapophysis broad, long and set with cavisetae.

Description. Head: Vertex raised. Ocular setae absent. Antennae clubbed and elongate; flagellomeres almost as long as wide at base, apical ones slightly wider than long. Palpimacula opening oval-shaped, located medially. Thorax: Pronotum longer than wide. Miller’s organ present. Wings: usually broad with tip acute. Anterior Banksian line present in both wings, posterior absent. Forewing prefork area wider than posterior area. Hind wing with one presectoral crossvein. Male pilula axillaris present. Legs: femur> 3.5x coxa length. Femoral sense hair absent. Protibia and protarsi about same size. Protibia with antennal cleaning setae. Tibial spurs present. Male Terminalia: Ectoproct posterior margin rounded; set with long black setae; 9 th sternite usually with a small medial invagination at the posterior margin. Female Terminalia: Ectoproct posterior margin rounded set with long black setae; lateral gonapophyses smaller than ectoproct and set with cavisetae; posterior gonapophyses broad, long, with a group of apical cavisetae; anterior gonapophyses usually present; 9 th tergite with a membranous digitiform process.

Distribution ( Figs. 78 , 87 ). Australia: NSW, NT, QLD, SA, VIC, WA. Widespread and common across mainland Australia.

Included species (6 spp.). Glenoleon aurora , G. froggatti , G. maculatus , G. minutillus , G. osmyloides , G. pulchellus .

Biology. Glenoleon froggatti and G. pulchellus have been collected as larvae in the field and reared in the laboratory. For additional information see Comments for those species.

Etymology. Probably Gleno - (from Glenurus , an antlion genus-group name) + - leon (from Greek leon, lion; a traditional antlion genus-group name ending), in allusion to the former generic placements and antlion taxonomic affinities of its originally included species.

Comments. The genus Glenoleon was created by Banks (1913) to hold the Australian species previously placed in Glenurus Schneider , a phylogenetically distant genus now placed in Nemoleontinae: Glenurini ( Machado et al. 2019) . Banks originally included six species in Glenoleon and proposed several characters to define it, including: RP arising before CuA fork; forewing and hind wing with three and one presectoral crossveins respectively; hind wing anal vein not running parallel to CuP; anterior Banksian line present; legs slender and spurs long. However, most of these characters are widely present in many Australian Dendroleontini and it was subsequently recognized that the genus lacked strongly definitive characters. Shortly after Banks’ initial paper, five new species were described in Glenoleon . Subsequently, New’s (1985b) revision of the group increased the size of the genus to 32 species (where it stood at the beginning of this study), but he (admittedly) made little headway in improving the phylogenetic definition of the group.

New (1985b) intentionally treated the genus very broadly and understood that the apparent superficial similarity of many species belied significant differences in male and female terminalic structure. However, as the patterns of terminalic variation were poorly understood, he chose to retain numerous species in Glenoleon , based primarily on the simple shared presence of tibial spurs. New noted that his circumscription of Glenoleon was likely unnatural, and would eventually need to be reappraised and subdivided, probably based on terminalic traits. That idea was generally supported by Stange (2004), and the polyphyletic nature of the genus in its then-current form was confirmed by the phylogenomic analysis of Machado et al. (2019). After restudying all of its species for the current revision, and conducting an additional morphological phylogenetic analysis ( Fig. 4 ), the circumscription of Glenoleon is redefined here. Most of its former species are removed to other genera, some of which are new, and the genus is restricted to its type species and five closest relatives.

Among the species most closely related to G. pulchellus is G. froggatti , the only species in the genus Platyleon . Platyleon was described by Esben-Petersen (1923), who related it to Glenoleon and Mossega Navás based on the large and biareolate costal area. The phylogenetic analyses, however, reveal those traits to be convergent, and G. froggatti is nested well within the restricted concept of Glenoleon as sister to G. pulchellus and G. maculatus ( Fig. 4 ). Based on this evidence, Platyleon is synonymized here with Glenoleon . In its new circumscription the species of Glenoleon are united primarily on the basis of traits of the female terminalia.

Figures

FIGURE 4. Strict consensus tree of morphology-based parsimony analysis of species belonging to the former subtribe Periclystina (ingroup, names in black), and outgroups (names in red). Former Glenoleon species are shown on blue branches, former Austrogymnocnemia species on green branches. Numbers above branches are Bremer support values; numbers below branches are bootstrap values (shown where>50%).

FIGURE 78. Distribution of Glenoleon species (part).

FIGURE 87. Distribution of Glenoleon species (part).