Metisotoma grandiceps, (Reuter, 1891)

Babenko, Anatoly, Stebaeva, Sophya & Turnbull, Matthew S., 2019, An updated checklist of Canadian and Alaskan Collembola, Zootaxa 4592 (1), pp. 1-125 : 73-74

M. grandiceps ( Reuter, 1891)

– Isotoma grandiceps Reuter, 1891: 229

AK Schött 1893; MacGillivray 1896; Schäffer 1900; Folsom 1937; Weber 1950; Hammer 1955; Bohnsack 1968; Cassagnau 1972; MacLean et al. 1978; Christiansen & Bellinger 1980, 1998; Ryan 1981; Danks 1981; Skidmore 1995; Fjellberg 1999; Potapov et al. 2018

YT Hammer 1953

NT Hammer 1953, 1955; Christiansen & Bellinger 1980, 1998; Rusek 1994; Skidmore 1995

BC Setälä & Marshall 1994; Skidmore 1995; Addison et al. 2003; Cannings 2010

AB Powell & Skaley 1975; Parsons & Parkinson 1986, 1986a; Skidmore 1995

QC Marshall 1964, 1967; Cassagnau 1972; Skidmore 1995; Therrien et al. 1999, 1999a; Chagnon et al. 2000, 2001

NF Arulnayagam 1995

Remarks: The first American record of this species was that of Schött (1893) from St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Later, three additional congeners were described from the Nearctic: M. macnamarai ( Folsom, 1918) , M. capitona Maynard, 1951 , and M. spiniseta Maynard, 1951 . Following opinions by Folsom (1937) and Christiansen & Bellinger (1980), these are all treated as synonyms of the widespread M. grandiceps on www. collembola .org. However, M. grandiceps was shown to be a complex of several distinct Nearctic and Eastern Palaearctic forms (Fjellberg 1999). Palaearctic species of the genus were recently revised and M. macnamarai was redescribed based on the types and fresh material ( Potapov et al. 2018). In the same paper the authors also noted that “the Nearctic fauna is probably more diverse and consists of at least six species, mostly undescribed” (p. 71). That is why at least some of the above records, especially those outside the Arctic, need verification.

General distribution: modern reliable records of the species are restricted to the Northwestern Nearctic (Alaska) and Eastern Palaearctic (see Potapov et al. 2018).