Deuteraphorura cebennaria ( Gisin, 1956 )

Fanciulli, Pietro Paolo, Loreti, Mara & Dallai, Romano, 2010, A new cave species of Deuteraphorura (Collembola: Onychiuridae) and redescription of four species of the genus from Italy, Zootaxa 2609, pp. 34-54 : 49

Deuteraphorura cebennaria ( Gisin, 1956)

Onyciurus difficilis Dallai, 1969: 235 –236, syn. nov.

At the beginning of this work we also considered the species Deuteraphorura difficilis ( Dallai, 1969) ; however some of the characters used for its definition appeared uncertain and doubtfull. The species is very similar to Deuteraphorura cebennaria ( Gisin, 1956) and the only character that allowed to distinguish the both forms was the ratio of M/s on Abd. V (1.5–1.8 in D. difficilis and 2–2.5 in D. cebennaria ). Therefore, in order to assess their reciprocal status, we compared the type material of both species.

Type material of D. difficilis : holotype (female) and 6 paratypes (5 females, 1 male) on slides in Collembolan collection, Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Siena. Holotype and 1 paratype labelled as “ Onychiurus difficilis, Montecristo 1-V-1967 (leg. R. Dallai)”; 5 paratypes (females) labelled as “ Onychiurus difficilis, Capraia , 19-III-1967 (leg. R. Dallai)”. Topotypes (8 females) in alcohol collection labelled “Montecristo, 20-III-1971, Cala Maestra, vicino la casa (leg. R. Dallai)”.

Type material of D. cebennaria : holotype and 2 paratypes on the same slide from the Collembolan collection (ex coll. Gisin) at the Museum of Natural History of Geneve. Holotype from Aven Marzal (Caves in Cervenne, France); paratype Kg 22 from cave à Margot (près de Mains?), 8/ 9-VIII-1954 (leg. P. Strinati); paratype Kg 37 from Grotte de Fais, Les Baux (Bouche de Rhône) 5-III-1957 (leg. P. Strinati).

We failed to find significant morphological differences between the two species, therefore the synonymy of D. difficilis with D. cebennaria has been proposed.