Acalymma

Cabrera, Nora C. & Durante, Silvana P., 2003, Comparative Morphology of Mouthparts in Species of the Genus Acalymma Barber (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Galerucinae), The Coleopterists Bulletin 57 (1), pp. 5-16 : 5

The genus Acalymma is an assemblage of 72 species occurring in America, mostly in the neotropical region. Acalymma was divided into four groups: A. gouldi group, A. horni group, A. peregrinum group and A. mysticum group (Smith and Lawrence 1967).

Previously, color patterns and elytral punctation were used to arrange the taxa. Male and female genitalia were used for recognizing species by Munroe and Smith (1980) and Cabrera (1999). Other structures, such as the mouthparts, have been ignored in systematic or evolutionary studies of Chrysomelidae even though they also provide good discriminatory characters. Reid (1995) discussed the importance of mouthpart characters for assessing phylogenetic relationships among subfamilies of Chrysomelidae . Crowson and Crowson (1996) and Lingafelter and Konstantinov (1999) did the same for Alticinae / Galerucinae. Wilcox (1965) showed the value of mandibles in characterizing tribes of Galerucinae and recognizing Acalymma and related genera. Recently Cabrera and Durante (2001) studied the mouthparts of the genus, discussed the value of some structures pertaining to the feeding habits of this genus and other Diabroticites and provided some phylogenetic considerations concerning Alticinae /Galerucinae relationships.

The present paper is a comparative morphological study of mouthparts in species of the genus Acalymma ; the objectives are to analyze the value of this source of characters to recognize species and to provide specific descriptions of them.

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