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A new genus, Campodesmoides gen. nov., is described to only encompass C. corniger sp. nov., from Cameroon. This genus and species is distinguished from the few known species of the small western African family Campodesmidae, all currently in Campodesmus, by the much longer antennae and legs, the normal pore formula with ozopores borne on porosteles, and the suberect and distally twisted gonopod, coupled with peculiar horns on a few anterior postcollum segments. A new Campodesmus is also described, C. alobatus sp. nov., from Ivory Coast, which differs from congeners primarily in the lack of a dorsal/lateral lobe on the otherwise usual and strongly subcircular gonopod telopodite, albeit the latter is not directed mesad, but held subparallel to the main body axis.
The characters used in taxonomy to describe new species cannot always be used to identify species in population surveys involving large samples. We used DNA barcoding to validate the taxonomic status of the morphospecies used in an ecological study involving 11 000 individual African drosophilids which had been determined without dissection. Some taxonomic information had been lost by not discriminating between rare species or by mistakenly splitting a morphologically variable species into two groups. However, the original ecological dataset provided a reliable picture of species diversity and the conclusions based on the original dataset are still supported by the molecular data.