Acostatrichia brevipenis, Flint, 1974

Santos, Allan Paulo Moreira, 2020, A review of the Neotropical microcaddisfly genus Acostatrichia Mosely, 1939 with description of a new species from Brazil (Trichoptera: Hydroptilidae: Leucotrichiinae), Zootaxa 4755 (2), pp. 201-230 : 210

Acostatrichia brevipenis Group

Remarks. In the descriptions of A. brevipenis Flint 1974 and A. fimbriata Flint 1974 , Flint (1974) indicated that these two species constituted a particular group within the genus, differing in several aspects from the other species known until that time. Here, together with another 3 species ( A. buborektala Oláh & Johanson 2011 , A. digitata Thomson & Holzenthal 2012 , A. tuskera Oláh & Flint 2012 ), they are placed into the A. brevipenis Group. This group is characterized by having the following features: (1) a costal bulla is usually absent from each forewing (present in A. brevipenis and A. tuskera ); (2) abdominal segment VII has one long and somewhat capitate ventromesal process, usually with a rugose apex; (3) segment VIII has a pair of conspicuous ventrolateral processes; (4) the inferior appendages are fused to each other, usually with a pair of digitate apicolateral processes.

In the phylogenetic analysis presented by Santos et al. (2016), species in the A. brevipenis Group did not cluster with those of the A. plaumanni Group. However, the placement of the A. brevipenis Group remained unclear, since the analyses had no resolution at this point ( Santos et al. 2016). It is likely that the A. brevipenis Group will become a new genus or that its species will be transferred, but with the currently limited knowledge of Leucotrichiinae diversity and phylogeny, I prefer to clarify the morphological and taxonomic aspects before proposing a new genus name.