NEOCOMIAN CHIRONOMID AND PODONOMINAE-APHROTENIINAE (DIPTERA) IN LIGHT OF PHYLOGENETICS AND BIOGEOGRAPHY

Called upon by a criticism by Schlee in 1975 the present a paper delivers a renewed investigation of the monophyly of the subfamilies Podonominae and Aphroteniinae and their position in the Chironomidae hierarchy. The validity of the conclusions reached by Brundin in 1966 is confirmed. Additional evidence is given by new cases of synapomorphy and unique parallelism. The concepts inside-and outside-parallelism are introduced. Schlee, being unaware of the implications of geographical vicariance and different cases of true parallelism, and of the consequences of unequal cleavage and unequal deviation, differs from the methodological approach of Henning and Brundin. LIBANOCHLITES neocomicus gen. et., sp. nov. from the Lower Cretaceous amber of Lebanon is described and its phylogenetic position and biogeographical significance discussed and integated with reviews of the Jurassic-Cretaceous history of Podonominae and Aphroteniinae.