The first documented record of Chvalaea Papp & Földvári, 2002 (Diptera, Hybotidae, Ocydromiinae) from the Australasian Region: a new species and its possible relationship to other members of the genus

. Chvalaea australis sp. nov. is described and illustrated, representing the first species of Chvalaea Papp & Földvári, 2002 from the Australasian Region. A discussion of the geographic distribution and the possible relationship among the species of the genus is provided.


Introduction
Chvalaea Papp & Földvári, 2002 is a small hybotid genus of predatory flies included in Ocydromiinae subfamily.The genus is recognized by the heavily sclerotized and punctated abdomen, cua cell approximately half length of bm cell and male and female terminalia concealed or retracted within the abdominal segment eight (Ale-Rocha 2006).
The genus was previously mentioned as "undescribed genus B" by Sinclair & Cumming (2000).It was formally described as Chvalaea by Papp & Földvári (2002), including the type species Leptopeza rugosiventris Strobl, 1910 from Austria and C. sopianae Papp & Földvári, 2002from Hungary. Ale-Rocha (2006) described five species from the Neotropical region: C. amazonica Ale-Rocha, 2006;C. boliviana Ale-Rocha, 2006;C. catarinensis Ale-Rocha, 2006;C. masneri Ale-Rocha, 2006and C. pulchra Ale-Rocha, 2006. Kahanpää (2013) broadened the distribution of the genus to Northern Europe, by the record of C. sopianae from eastern Finland.Shamshev et al. (2017) proposed Chvalaea sopianae Papp & Földvári, 2002 as a synonym of Chvalaea rugosiventris (Strobl, 1910), and increased the occurrence of C. rugosiventris to Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East.Barros et al. (2019) described three additional species from the Neotropical Region: C. annularis Barros & Ale-Rocha, 2019, C. ecuadoriensis Barros & Ale-Rocha, 2019 and C. sinclairi Barros & Ale-Rocha, 2019, besides an illustrated key, distributional map and updated diagnoses of all the Neotropical species.The latest species described in the genus was C. yolkamini Jaume-Schinkel, Soares & Barros, 2020 from Mexico, that represents the New World northernmost record of the genus.The hunting behavior of adults, description and illustration of the eggs, as well as a possible courtship display of C. yolkamini had also been provided (Jaume-Schinkel et al. 2020, 2022).Nevertheless, the data about the biology of the immature stages of the genus are completely absent.
In this paper, we describe a new species of Chvalaea, the first documented record of the genus from Australasian Region, previously cited in Barros et al. (2019) as an "undescribed species for the Australasian Region".In addition, we discuss the geographic distribution, morphology and the possible relationship to other species of the genus.

Material and methods
Terms used for adult structures and abbreviations follow Cumming & Wood (2017).We describe the male terminalia based on their unrotated position, considering the cerci positioned dorsally.In descriptions and figures, male terminalia and their parts are presented oriented with their basal (anterior) part at the bottom and the apical (posterior) part at the top of the figure.Female terminalia are shown in the figure with the anterior part oriented to the left and the posterior part to the right.
Terminalia were removed from the abdomen, treated with hot 85% lactic acid and after analysis kept in a microvial partially filled with glycerine.Wing was photographed after being removed from the body, mounted between cover slides with Canada balsam and glued by one side to a small piece of cardboard.Microvials and cover slides were pinned together with their respective specimens.
Specimens were photographed with a Leica MC170 HD camera, attached on a Leica M165C stereo microscope.Photographs were stacked and combined using Leica Application Suite ver.V4.11.The distribution map was created with Simplemappr (Shorthouse 2010) using specimen labels and records of iNaturalist until November 2021.

Diagnosis
Frons short (approximately 1 /5 length of face), wide (as wide as ocellar triangle), with a shallow concavity at mid-length; occiput black with gray pruinosity, except central upper postcranium region with yellow pruinosity.Coxae yellow with white pruinosity, except basal half of fore coxa brown and bare; hind tibia black, except base brown; fore and mid tarsi brown, hind tarsus black; hind tarsomeres 3-5 with short, blunt and black spine-like ventral setae.Wing with cell cua slightly longer than half length of cell bm, veins M 1 and M 4 not reaching the wing margin, cell r 1 slightly broadened at apex.
Wing (Fig. 3).Light brown; cell cua slightly longer than half length of cell bm; veins M 1 , M 4 and CuA+CuP not reaching wing margin; cell dm slightly shorter than br and bm cells; pterostigma slightly darker than rest of wing membrane; cell r 1 somewhat broadened at apex; halter dark brown, except stem yellow.Legs.All coxae yellow, covered with white pruinosity, except basal half of fore coxa brown and bare; femora pale brown, except middle dorsal surface of hind femur and apexes of all femora darker; fore and mid tibiae brown, hind tibia black except base brown (Fig. 1E); fore and mid tarsi brown, hind tarsus black.Chaetotaxy: mid femur with 2 long anterior setae on apical half and 1 apical seta stronger; hind femur with 3 long setae near apex (1 dorsal and 1 anteroventral fine, 1 anterior strong), and 1 long ventral seta at mid-length; fore tibia with 1 long and strong ventral seta at mid-length; mid tibia with 1 strong dorsal seta near base, 3 long and strong anterodorsal setae (1 seta on basal ⅓, 1 at mid-length, 1 near apex) and 1 long and strong ventral seta at mid-length of mid tibia; hind femur with 2 long and fine anteroventral setae (1 on basal half and 1 at mid-length), and 1 long and fine posteroventral on basal half.Fore basitarsus with 1 long and strong ventral seta near base; mid basitarsomere with 1 posteroventral long and strong seta near base; hind tarsomeres (Fig. 1F) 1-2 with 1 anteroventral and 1 posteroventral rows of long strong black spine-like setae, hind tarsomere 3 with 3 anteroventral and 2 posteroventral short and blunt spine-like setae, hind tarsomere 4 with 1 short and blunt spine-like ventral seta, 1 anteroventral and 1 posteroventral spine-like setae at apex, hind tarsomere 5 with 1 short and blunt spine-like ventral setae.

Remarks
Chvalaea australis sp.nov. is similar to C. ecuadoriensis, by frons broad, as wide as ocellar triangle.The new species may be distinguished from the latter by the color of the hind tibia, which is brown in C. ecuadoriensis, but black with a brown base in C. australis, and by the cell r 1 which is wide at the apex in C. australis but narrow in C. ecuadoriensis.Distribution (Fig. 4) Chvalaea australis sp.nov. is known to occur only in the temperate broadleaf forests (Olson et al. 2001) of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

Discussion
Species of Chvalaea form a well-supported monophyletic group based on the anal lobe poorly developed (even narrower than in Oropezella Collin, 1926) and cell cua short, approximately half the length of the second basal cell (bm), in addition to the abdomen heavily sclerotized and male terminalia concealed within the abdominal segment 8, and it seems to imply in paraphyly of Oropezella (Ale-Rocha & Freitas-Silva 2014).
In the Neotropics, six out of nine species are known exclusively from altitudes higher than 1000 m (3000-1100 m), while other three occur in lower altitudes (60-550 m), but in all cases each species is known to inhabit a narrow altitudinal range (Barros et al. 2009;Jaume-Schinkel et al. 2020).The specimens sampled in this paper indicate that Chvalaea australis sp.nov.occurs in a wide altitudinal range, from Landsborough Shire (alt.200 m) to the New England National Park (alt.1300-1500 m), all of them in temperate wet forests (Olson et al. 2001).Despite all these altitudinal ranges, the species may inhabit similar microenvironments, given that little morphological variation was observed among the specimens.
In addition to the previous records of the Palaearctic, Oriental and Neotropical Regions, Chvalaea is known to occur also in the Australasian Region, fulfilling 11 species worldwide.Currently, the genus is more diverse in the Neotropics, with nine known species, but more species may await description in Australasia.A quick search on the iNaturalist website (iNaturalist 2022) for Chvalaea from Australia returns 11 records from Victoria and Tasmania, some of them reproduced here (Fig. 5A-C).Those photographs show interesting variations in comparison with those of C. australis sp.nov.; all exemplars have mostly black legs, and in some of them only the coxae are yellow, while in C. australis the legs are more extensively yellow, with only the hind tibia and tarsus black.Unfortunately, it is not possible to affirm or deny if any of those specimens is conspecific with C. australis or new species, given that the safe identification of species of Chvalaea requires the dissection and comparison of male terminalia.In addition, male and female terminalia in Chvalaea are hidden by the eighth abdominal segment, making even the sexual determination unavailable in photographs.Thus, despite the positive impact that photographs of insects in social media may play in taxonomy, particularly in approximating specialists and enthusiasts in the discovery of possible new taxa (Jaume-Schinkel et al. 2020), the close examination of the insects is still mandatory for Chvalaea, evidencing the need for a more comprehensive study of the genus in Australia.
Photographs from websites such as iNaturalist, referenced with the respective local of observation, may also lead to priority areas to carry out collections and help to improve the knowledge of the diversity of Chvalaea, which is still poorly represented in entomological collections.