Nama

Meregalli, Massimo, Borovec, Roman, Cervella, Piero, Santovito, Alfredo, Toševski, Ivo, Ottati, Sara & Nakládal, Oto, 2021, The Namaini, a new weevil tribe with six new genera from South Africa (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Entiminae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 193, pp. 95-123 : 95-96

THE NAMA -GROUP PLAN OF THE PROJECT

TACKLING THE TAXA OF THE NAMA -GROUP

T h e g e n u s N a m a B o r o v e c & M e r e g a l l i, 2 0 1 3 was described for four species of small edaphic

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Entiminae , collected in Richtersveld National Park, Northern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa ( Borovec & Meregalli, 2013 ). Further collecting trips in the Republic of South Africa and southern Namibia, as well as the examination of extensive material deposited in private collections and in some European, North American and South African museums yielded specimens from over 60 more populations, whose morphology suggested possible affinities with the species already described in the genus Nama . All these specimens are defined here as belonging to the “ Nama -group”.

Several questions arose when we tried to infer a proper classification of these taxa. First of all, are all these apparently related taxa truly belonging to a monophyletic unit? And, if any clade is delimited, in which tribe should these be placed? Is it possible to recognize within the clade, single units separated by discontinuities to be regarded as distinct genera and how many different species can be recognized among these specimens?

We had to address several biases and difficulties: (1) only two taxa sharing morphological similarities with the Nama -group were previously known: Trachyphloeosoma brevicolle Voss, 1974 and Trachyphloeus brevis Boheman, 1842 (which do not belong to the genera to which they were first assigned), all the others being undescribed; (2) no other apparently related taxa from the western part of South Africa (actually, from the entire sub-Saharan region) are known; and (3) there is no phylogenetic reconstruction for any of the South African members of the subfamily. When the four species of Nama were described, it was already doubtful that they could be referred to as a single genus, because of the great morphological variation among them ( Borovec & Meregalli, 2013 ). The large number of new taxa that were subsequently sampled reinforced this opinion and underlined the great diversity and complexity of the Nama -group. Trying to identify monophyletic units, we have performed a phylogenetic analysis of these edaphic Entiminae , based on the sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (mt-Cox1 hereafter). The set of species that were analysed included sequences of a few other edaphic South African Entiminae found during o u r e x p e d i t i o n s, n o t a l way s i d e n t i f i e d a t t h e species level and possibly undescribed, but whose morphology allowed their identification at genus rank: Cycliscus sp. , Phaylomerinthus sp. n. 1 and Ph. sp. n. 2 ( Embrithini ) and Oosomus sp. (Oosomini) . Philetaerobius nidicola Marshall, 1923 [ Entiminae incertae sedis ( Borovec et al., 2018)], an Entiminae strongly differentiated morphologically, was used as one of the outgroups.