Infection, Genetics and Evolution 2 (2002) 11–17 Phylogenetic relationships within the oliveirai complex (Hemiptera:Reduviidae:Triatominae) François Noireau a,b,* , Silvia Menezes dos Santos a , Marcia Gumiel c , Jean-Pierre Dujardin d , Marcos dos Santos Soares a , Rodolfo Ubaldo Carcavallo a , Cleber Galvão a , José Jurberg a a Laboratório Nacional e Internacional de Referˆ encia em Taxonomia de Triatom´ ıneos, Departamento de Entomologia, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Av. Brasil 4365, 21045-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil b UR016, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Av. Agropolis 911, 34032 Montpellier, France c Departamento de Parasitolog´ ıa, Instituto Nacional de Laboratorios en Salud (INLASA), calle Rafael Zubieta 1889, La Paz, Bolivia d UR062, UMR CNRS-IRD 9926, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Av. Agropolis 911, 34032 Montpellier, France Received 19 November 2001; received in revised form 3 March 2002; accepted 5 April 2002 Abstract The oliveirai complex is actually composed of nine related species of Triatominae that occur in the Pantanal ecosystem of Mato Grosso, Brazil. In order to confirm their specific status and infer their phylogenetic relationships, we performed a genetic and morphometric comparison concerning seven of the nine species of the complex. Isoenzyme analysis provided broadly similar phylogenetic information to that derived from discriminant analysis of size-free variables. The derived trees reveal two main species groups, one composed of three closed species (T. jurbergi, T. matogrossensis and T. vandae), and another one subdivided into two different pairs, the T. guazu–T. williami pair and the T. klugi–T. oliveirai pair. The results call the specific status of T. guazu and T. williami into question, support the possibility that the other analyzed species represent distinct taxa and query the existence of the oliveirai complex. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Triatominae; Oliveirai complex; Multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE); Morphometrics; Taxonomy; Phylogeny 1. Introduction The proposal of the oliveirai complex, recently defended by Carcavallo et al. (2000), is supported by morphological traits shared by its members. According to these authors, it was then composed of seven related species which occur in Center-Western and Southern Brazil, although one species (T. guazu) was originally described from the Department of Guairá, Paraguay. The seven species forming the complex were: T. oliveirai (Neiva et al., 1939), which is the nomino- typical species, T. matogrossensis Leite and Barbosa, 1953, T. williami Galvão, Souza and Lima, 1965, T. guazu Lent and Wygodzinsky, 1979, T. jurbergi Carcavallo, Galvão and Lent, 1998, T. baratai Carcavallo and Jurberg, 2000, and T. klugi Carcavallo, Jurberg, Lent and Galvão 2001. Re- cently, T. deaneorum Galvão, Souza and Lima 1967 and T. vandae n. sp. Carcavallo et al., 2002 were also included in this complex. Thus, the oliveirai complex is actually com- posed of nine species. These species are mainly terrestrial ∗ Corresponding author. Fax: +55-21-2573-44-68. E-mail address: noireauf@ioc.fiocruz.br (F. Noireau). but, except scarce data for some of them, their ecologi- cal traits remain unknown. The origin of this geographi- cally limited complex may be the Pantanal ecosystem of Mato Grosso, Brazil (Carcavallo et al., 2000). The Table 1 summarizes the available data on their distribution and ecology. Five species pertaining to the complex display a trend toward domesticity and might act as vector of Chagas dis- ease (T. matogrossensis, T. williami, T. guazu, T. jurbergi and T. deaneorum). Because of the great similarity be- tween some of the members of the oliveirai complex and the recently described T. vandae new species in Mato Grosso (Carcavallo et al., 2002), we decided to per- form a genetic and morphometric comparison of species of the complex in order to confirm their specific status and infer their phylogenetic relationships. We utilized the multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE), a tech- nique that has been widely used in triatomine systematics (Dujardin and Tibayrenc, 1985; Harry et al., 1992; Pereira et al., 1996; Noireau et al., 1998; Flores et al., 2001) and morphometric analysis as described by Dujardin et al. (1999a). 1567-1348/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S1567-1348(02)00059-X