Discordance Between Morphological Species Identification and mtDNA Phylogeny in the Flesh Fly Genus Ravinia (Diptera : Sarcophagidae)

Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood methods were used to infer phylogenetic relationships. The results indicate that the genera Ravinia and Chaetoravinia previously synonymised into the genus Ravinia (sensu lato) are each likely to be monophyletic (posterior probability 1; bootstrap support 85 percent). The study found highly supported paraphyletic relationships among species of Ravinia, with relatively deep splits in the phylogeny. This conflict between the morphological species definitions and the mtDNA phylogeny could be indicative of the presence of cryptic species in Ravinia anxia (Walker, 1849), Ravinia floridensis (Aldrich, 1916), Ravinia lherminieri (Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830), and Ravinia querula (Walker, 1849). (Publisher abstract modified)