I have a male Nannochorista just put into a slide mounting. Nobody is really sure if they are sister to Diptera or a member of the Mecoptera, but I will be working on this soon and share some thoughts on M5. I also have a student working on Neuroptera, not sure if this will help or make it even more complicated... Best,
You are ablolutely right, there can be little doubt that McAlpine's
CuA1 is
M4 or M3+4; there is a good transformation seties in fossils and
extant
taxa. However, it has been suggested that McApline's CuA2 is
homologous to
M5 of Mecoptera (Shcherbakov et al., 1995). Then weak vein
immediately
posterior to it and the next one (traditional A1) would become CuA
and CuP,
and the traditional A2 - PCu of Snodgrass. If we want to do homology
of
venation we would have to study not only basal Limoniidae,
Tanyderidae etc,
but also Mecoptera, Trichoptera and Neuroptera at least. I suppose we
could
look at trachation, innervation and auxillary sclerites. Pupae might
be a
great help for that.
Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical):
Ed Baker,
Katherine Bouton
Alice Heaton
Dimitris Koureas,
Laurence Livermore,
Dave Roberts,
Simon Rycroft,
Ben Scott,
Vince Smith
Vlad,
I have a male Nannochorista just put into a slide mounting. Nobody is really sure if they are sister to Diptera or a member of the Mecoptera, but I will be working on this soon and share some thoughts on M5. I also have a student working on Neuroptera, not sure if this will help or make it even more complicated... Best,
Dalton
--