The Afrotropical hoverflies remain an understudied group of hoverflies. One of the reasons for the lack of studies on this group resides in the difficulties to delimit the species using the available identification keys. DNA barcoding has been found useful in such cases of taxonomical uncertainty. Here, we present a molecular study of hoverfly species from the eastern Free State of South Africa using the mitochondrial cytochrome-c oxidase subunit I gene (COI). The identification of 78 specimens was achieved through three analytical approaches: genetic distances analysis, species delimitation models and phylogenetic reconstructions. In this study, 15 nominal species from nine genera were recorded. Of these species, five had not been previously reported to occur in South Africa, namely, Betasyrphus inflaticornis Bezzi, 1915, Mesembrius strigilatus Bezzi, 1912, Eristalinus tabanoides Jaennicke, 1876, Eristalinus vicarians Bezzi, 1915 and Eristalinus fuscicornis Karsch, 1887. Intra- and interspecific variations were found and were congruent between neighbour-joining and maximum likelihood analyses, except for the genus Allograpta Osten Sacken, 1875, where identification seemed problematic, with a relatively high (1.56%) intraspecific LogDet distance observed in Allograpta nasuta Macquart, 1842. Within the 78 specimens analysed, the assembled species by automatic partitioning (ASAP) estimated the presence of 14-17 species, while the Poisson tree processes based on the MPTP and SPTP models estimated 15 and 16 species. The three models showed similar results (10 species) for the Eristalinae subfamily, while for the Syrphinae subfamily, 5 and 6 species were suggested through MPTP and SPTP, respectively. Our results highlight the necessity of using different species delimitation models in DNA barcoding for species diagnoses.
Keywords: Afrotropical hoverflies; COI gene; genetic richness; local-scale studies; species delimitation.