Archaphorura, Bagnall, 1949

Weiner, Grzegorz Paśnik Wanda M., 2017, First phylogenetic analysis of the tribe Oligaphorurini (Collembola: Onychiuridae) inferred from morphological data, with implications for generic classification, Organisms Diversity & Evolution 17 (3), pp. 619-631 : 621-623

Monophyly of Archaphorura

The monophyly of Archaphorura was not recovered in our study. The genus is composed of three species, two of which were included in the analysis. Archaphorura serratotuberculata , the type species of the genus, is nested within the species of Oligaphorura in the clade B (Fig. 1). This species is characterized by three unique autapomorphies: antennal segments III and IV accreted ventrally (character 10), sense organ of the third antennal segment in subapical position

Fig. 1 Strict consensus of two most parsimonious trees resulting from the analysis of the morphological dataset under equal weight (L = 302; CI = 0.31; RI = 0.61). Numbers above each node indicate Bremer support (BS); numbers below each node indicate symmetric resampling

(character 11), abdominal tergites V and VI fused dorsally (character 37) (Fig. 2). The second studied species, Archaphorura marcuzzii , did not share these autapomorphies and was placed in clade A (Fig. 1).

Besides a unique character combination of type species, Archaphorura was also characterized by the absence of anal spines (in contrast to all remaining genera). However, recently described species without anal spines were placed in the genera Oligaphorura and Micraphorura ( Shvejonkova and Potapov 2011; Babenko and Fjellberg 2015) thereby depriving genus its main diagnostic feature. In all other respects, especially in the form of furca remnant, it is congruent with the species of Oligaphorura .