Hemitrichapion wagneri wagneri, 2006

Stüben, Peter E., Schütte, André & Astrin, Jonas J., 2021, Barcoding and interspecific relationships of Macaronesian Weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea), Beiträge Zur Entomologie = Contributions to Entomology 71 (1), pp. 127-135 : 131

Hemitrichapion wagneri wagneri vs. H. w. gomerense

– just a colour play?

Hemitrichapion wagneri gomerense STÜBEN & BEHNE, 2010 , is without exception a red-copper metallic species on La Gomera (type locality) and El Hierro, while the nominotypic taxon from the Iberian Peninsula appears bluish green (type locality is Cascais, Portugal). The two subspecies living on various Lotus species cannot actually be confused with each other and are certainly not conspecific from a morphological point of view! However on Tenerife there even seems to be two species/ subspecies: H. wagneri gomerense and another coppercoloured, cryptic (sub)species, which clusters together with H. wagneri wagneri (FLACH, 2006) from Portugal (Estremadura) and Spain (Andalucía) in the tree. If the clear clade formation can be confirmed, there would be no objection to a (sub)species splitting, but in such cases one should not forego the molecular investigation of many more populations from the named islands in order to exclude polyphyly and/or paraphyly; otherwise - and in what we consider to be a very unlikely case - the two (sub)species would only be colour variants of the same species.