Cerodontha Rondani, 1861

Lonsdale, Owen, 2021, Manual of North American Agromyzidae (Diptera, Schizophora), with revision of the fauna of the " Delmarva " states, ZooKeys 1051, pp. 1-481 : 1

Cerodontha Rondani

Odontocera Macquart, 1835: 614. Type species: Chlorops denticornis Panzer 1806: 104, by original designation. Preoccupied by Audinet-Serville (1833, Cerambycidae ).

Cerodontha Rondani, 1861: 10. Type species: Chlorops denticornis Panzer 1806: 104, by original designation. Nowakowski 1973: 7; Spencer 1969: 109; Spencer and Steyskal 1986b: 87.

Odonthocera . Misspelling. Rondani 1861: 10.

Ceratomyza Schiner, 1862: 434 [unnecessary replacement name for Odontocera ]. Type species: Chlorops denticornis Panzer 1806: 104, by automatic designation. Hendel 1931 [synonymy?].

Cerodonta . Misspelling. Hendel 1920: 114, 1932: 265; Hering 1926: 223.

Cerodontha is a speciose and morphologically diverse genus divided into seven subgenera: Butomomyza , Cerodontha s. s., Dizygomyza , Icteromyza , Phytagromyza , Poemyza and Xenophytomyza . All of these occur in the Nearctic, although Phytagromyza is not yet known from the Delmarva states. Approximately 260 species are known, all of which are leaf miners in the monocot families Cyperaceae , Iridaceae , Juncaceae and Poaceae ( Boucher 2010).

Cerodontha species have a lunule that is higher than wide, or at least it usually appears to be higher than wide because the broader base of some species is often concealed by the overlapping inner-anterior margin of the fronto-orbital plate. The male genitalia are also characteristic, as the mesophallus is well-developed, stalk-like and fused to a similarly well-developed, long distiphallus with one pair of apical tubules that are secondarily fused in very few species. Furthermore, the venter of the subepandrial sclerite is produced into one pair of long, well-sclerotised processes. This process has often been referred to in the literature as the " Langfortsatz ", which simply means a long process and is here referred to descriptively as the ventral process of the subepandrial sclerite. It has also been referred to as the "upper surstylar lobe" by Zlobin (1995, 2007d) based on similarities to a structure in a Palaearctic Metopomyza ; this is an understandable interpretation, and still potentially valid because there is certainly confluence between this structure and the fused surstylus/epandrium, and not just the subepandrial sclerite; the point of confluence, however, actually appears to be along the infolded surface of the posteroventral margin of the epandrium, not the surstylus itself. The homology of this structure is still in need of verification, as no intermediate forms appear to exist, and parallel fusion of the epandrium and/or surstylus and the subepandrial sclerite occurres throughout the family, including in the genera Agromyza , Aulagromyza , Japanagromyza , Metopomyza , Nemorimyza , and Ophiomyia . For the purpose of this study, the position of this sclerite and its confluence with the remainder of the subepandrial sclerite proper appears to make homology with this latter structure the most efficient explanation.