Blaps lethifera Marsham, 1802

Nabozhenko, Maxim V., Chigray, Ivan A., Ntatsopoulos, Konstantinos & Papadopoulou, Anna, 2022, A key to Russian and Eastern European species of Blaps Fabricius, 1775 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae: Blaptinae) with the description of a new species from the North Caucasus supported by morphological and molecular data, Zootaxa 5116 (2), pp. 267-291 : 286-288

Blaps lethifera Marsham, 1802

( Fig. 23E, F )

= Blaps pterotapha Ménétriés, 1832 , syn. n.

The species Blaps pterotapha Ménétriés, 1832 was described from Baku and long time was interpreted as a subspecies of Blaps lethifera (see full bibliography in Abdurakhamnov & Nabozhenko (2011)). Transcaucasian populations named “ B. lethifera pterotapha ” differ from the European populations only by weakly emarginated lateral margins of the pronotum at the base. This character is very variable, and specimens with emarginated or weakly emarginated or non-emarginated lateral pronotum margins can be found even in one Transcaucasian micropopulation. This unreliable character’s entire spectrum of variability can be observed in specimens from the east Caspian coast to western Turkey. The extensive variability of this species has been beautifully illustrated in the work of Šustek (1982). Another illustrative example is two very unusual specimens from the Don River delta area. These specimens were collected after deep excavation by an excavator in sandy alluvial soils near the banks of Don River in the burrows of Spalax microphthalmus Güldenstädt, 1770 . The first two authors interpreted them as an isolated, distant micropopulation of Blaps scabriuscula ( Chigray et al. 2015) . However, COI analysis showed that this Don micropopulation is genetically highly similar with specimens assigned to Blaps lethifera ( Fig. 22 ), despite significant morphological differences. Considering the information mentioned above, we propose the following new synonymy: Blaps lethifera Marsham, 1802 = Blaps pterotapha Ménétriés, 1832 syn. n.

In addition, we examined the specimen, which was listed as Blaps pterosticha Fischer von Waldheim, 1844 from Orenburg Region of Russia ( Shapovalov et al. 2011; Kozminykh 2015). The specimen is a typical B. lethifera , so B. pterosticha must be excluded from the Russian faunistic list.

Blaps sinuatocollis Solier, 1848 (recorded as nominotypical subspecies from Southern Russia ( Nabozhenko & Chigray 2020)) was described as the variation B of Blaps reflexicollis (now a junior synonym of B. lethifera ). Types of both taxa are lost (personal communication with Antoine Mantilleri (MNHN)). In our opinion, this name is infrasubspecific and must be excluded from zoological nomenclature because Solier’s description unambiguously reveals that the name was proposed for an infrasubspecific entity (article 45.6.4 of ICZN). Solier indicated that var. B ( sinuatocollis ) is just one male deviating from the typical form, and if its characters were stable, then it could be a species ( Solier 1848, pp. 315, 316).

Figures

FIGURE 22. ML phylogenetic tree reconstruction of Blaps species from the Northern Caucasus in IQ-TREE. Numbers above branches represent bootstrap support values (values <50% and the ones corresponding to short intraspecific branches are omitted).

FIGURE 23. Blaps spp., habitus. A = non-rugose male of B. verrucosa from Baku, Azerbaijan, (the type locality of B. scabriuscula) ZM MSU; B = rugose male of B. verrucosa from Georgia (Kazbegi), ZIN; C = lectotype labels of B. subalpina, D = lectotype of B. subalpina, male (ZIN); E = lectotype labels of B. pterotapha; F = lectotype of B. pterotapha, female (ZIN).