Geographic note on species of the genus Upa Kimsey , 1991 ( Hymenoptera : Tiphiidae , Thynninae ) in the Atlantic Forest , Brazil

Upa Kimsey is a poorly known genus of Tiphiidae with seven species. This genus has records in forest areas and in this paper we present new records to four species. All specimens were collected by malaise traps in four areas of Atlantic Rain Forest and three of Atlantic Semi-deciduous forest, mainly from high and mid-elevations. The new records indicate that species of Upa are not as rare as others genera of Tiphiidae, which are virtually unknown in many Neotropical regions. 1 Universidade Estadual de São Paulo, Institituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas de São José do Rio Preto, Department of Zoology and Botany, Cristóvão Colombo, 2265. CEP 15054-000. São José do Rio Preto, SP., Brazil. 2 Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Department of Biology, Avenue Bandeirantes, 3900. CEP 14040-901. Ribeirão Preto, SP., Brazil. * Corresponding author. E-mail: cintiaelju@gmail.com Cíntia Eleonora Lopes Justino 1*, Eduardo Fernando dos Santos 2 and Fernando Barbosa Noll 1 Geographic note on species of the genus Upa Kimsey, 1991 (Hymenoptera: Tiphiidae, Thynninae) in the Atlantic Forest,

Geographic note on species of the genus Upa Kimsey, 1991 (Hymenoptera: Tiphiidae, Thynninae) in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil Neotropical Tiphiidae has been highly neglected in a general way (Genise and Kimsey, 1991;Kimsey 1991Kimsey , 1992)).Genise and Kimsey (1991) highlight such problem for the Neotropical Thynninae and describe several genera, among of them the genus Upa Kimsey.Posteriorly, Kimsey (1996) described other species and nowadays it includes seven species from Eastern and Southeastern South America (Kimsey 1996).Like other Thynninae, Upa shows strong sexual dimorphism, with apterous females and winged males (Genise and Kimsey 1991;Kimsey 1996), but species biology is virtually unknown.Taxonomy of Upa is essentially based on the male morphology, since females are known only for U. porteri Kimsey and U. impressiceps (Turner).
All species of this genus have been recorded only in forested areas, with four of them: U. nasuta Kimsey, U. longispina Kimsey, U. ligulata Kimsey, and U. porteri Kimsey known only from the type locality.The type locality of Upa nasuta is Brazil: São Paulo, Serra da Bocaina, S. J. Barreiros, U. longispina is from Brazil: São Paulo, H. Florestal, U. ligulata is from Brazil: Rio Grande do Sul, Arroio Arapua, and U. porteri is from Argentina: Corrientes, Las Marias (Kimsey 1996).Herein, we present new records of U. longispina, U. nasuta, U. porteri and U. tridentata Kimsey from the Atlantic Forest, Brazil.
The Atlantic Forest is composed of two main phytophysiognomies: Atlantic Rain Forest and Atlantic Semi-deciduous Forest (Morellato and Haddad 2000).These phytophysiognomies correspond respectively to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest Province and Parana Forest Province + Araucaria angustifolia Forest Province, which form the Parana Subregion proposed by Morrone (2006) for the Neotropical Region.
The specimens used in this study were deposited in the Hymenoptera Collection at the Department of Zoology and Botany of the São Paulo State University, in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, Brazil, and in the Hymenoptera Collection at the Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.Identification of species was made using a stereomicroscope Leica MZ 16 coupled to a digital camera Leica DFC 295.Images were captured using the software Leica Aplication Suitte (LAS) Version 3.8 and the construction of the final images was done by the software Auto Montage Pro Version 5.03.0061.Posterior treatment was performed in Photoshop®.
Some studies suggest that the Parana Subregion is historically related to the Andean Region (Vanin 1976;Roig-Alsina 1989;Morrone and Lopretto 1994), while others indicate historical relationships with the Amazonian Subregion (Costa 2003;Sigrist and Carvalho;2009).In some cases, close relationships between the Parana Subregion and the Andean Region is established by groups with amphinotic distribution, such as Thynninae.However, the lack of complete phylogenetic studies for Thynninae, and the lack of information on its fauna from the Amazonian Subregion restrict the prediction of any inference.Upa was described in Genise and Kimsey (1991) by monotypy and the description presented the most distinctive features for the genus.Later, Kimsey (1996) described six new species of Upa and showed distribution for the species.However there are no diagnostic characters or synapomorphies to delimit the genus, which complicate their identification.
Several other Atlantic Rain Forest areas between Santa Catarina and Paraíba States were also sampled using Malaise traps, but species of Upa were never collected.Moreover, searches for species of this genus were done in Tiphiidae collection of various institutions, and they were never found.In this way, we could conclude that Upa is really restricted to the Atlantic Forest, mainly to high and mid-elevations, as suggested by Kimsey (1996).In addition, such records indicate that species of Upa are not rare, and that the Thynninae fauna, as well other groups of Hymenoptera Aculeata (Santos and Noll 2010), of several South American regions is very poorly known.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Distribution map of four species of Upa Kimsey (Hymenoptera: Thynninae).Circles indicate old records and triangles new records.