Dacinae

Overview of subfamily Dacinae The subfamily Dacinae contains three tribes— Ceratitidini, Gastrozonini and Dacini —united by larval characters, particularly the usual presence of a ridge on the ventral tubercle of the caudal segment (Kovac et al. 2006) and presence of only two spermathecae. The primarily Afrotropical tribe Ceratitidini and primarily Oriental tribe Gastrozonini both have a semicircular (and sometimes slightly to moderately swollen) scutellum and are currently separated on host plant use—fruit in Ceratitidini and stems/shoots of Poaceae (especially Bambusoideae) in Gastrozonini. However, the latter is likely to be paraphyletic, with some genera, particularly the Afrotropical panicoid grassfeeding Bistrispinaria Speiser and its close allies Clinotaenia Bezzi and Leucotaeniella Bezzi, which have simple, non-coiled and subovate spermathecae (Hancock 1985) and distinct whitish-tomentose bands on abdominal tergites II and IV; these characters are likely to be basal to the Ceratitidini, many species of which also have these bands. They also occur in the Oriental genera Anoplomus Bezzi and Proanoplomus Shiraki, but whether they belong in Ceratitidini or Gastrozonini remains unclear; at least Anoplomus has densely coiled spermathecae, an enlarged proctiger and breeds in bamboo. It is possible that the whitish-tomentose abdominal bands is a character shared by both ancestral Ceratitidini and Gastrozonini. Current molecular (CO1) phylogenies (e.g. David et al. (2021, 2022) lack relevant genera and are generally incompatible with morphology.