Morphology-Based Phylogeny and Biogeography of Wockia (Lepidoptera: Urodidae) with Description of a New Species from Japan and South Korea

Wockia, one of the six genera within the lepidopteran family Urodidae, currently includes nine species distributed in Holarctic, Oriental, and Neotropical regions. A new species of the genus, W. magna sp. nov., is described from Japan and South Korea. This is the first record of Urodidae from Japan. A cladistic analysis was constructed based on 27 morphological characters from five ingroup species and two outgroup taxa. A single most parsimonious tree was found (length = 38, CI = 71, RI = 70). The resulting tree failed to recover the monophyly of Wockia chewbacca and a clade Wockia sensu stricto, including four congeners from North America, temperate East Asia and Southeast Asia. Wockia sensu stricto was resolved as monophyletic and was divided into two subgroups, one including W. asperipunctella and W. magna, and the other including W. koreana and W. variata. The sister-group relationship of W. asperipunctella and W. magna was moderately supported. Synapomorphies of Wockia sensu stricto are provided from the resulting phylogeny. Systematic definitions of Wockia and other allied genera are revised. Optimal ancestral area reconstruction implemented in DIVA resulted in different hypotheses for Wockia, depending on how to constrain the maximum number of areas. The maximum area number set as two yielded a more likely scenario suggesting that Wockia sensu stricto originated in temperate East Asia and then dispersed into the Oriental region, North America, and Europe. A working hypothesis and other equally possible alternative explanations for the biogeography of Wockia are provided.