Otiorhynchus Germar, 1822

Christoph Germann, Sofia Wyler & Marco Valerio Bernasconi, 2017, DNA barcoding of selected alpine beetles with focus on Curculionoidea (Coleoptera), Revue suisse de Zoologie 124 (1), pp. 15-38 : 24-25

Genus Otiorhynchus Germar, 1822 s. str.

All species samples from this subgenus clustered together, although with insufficient bootstrap support ( Fig. 1 , Supp. 1), including O. morio Fabricius, 1781, type species (!) of the subgenus Phalantorrhynchus Reitter, 1912 , but morphologically hardly separable from Otiorhynchus s. str. This might show, as already suspected by the span of morphological differing members, and species only weakly differing from Otiorhynchus s. str. (as e.g. O. tenebricosus versus O. putoni Stierlin, 1891 ), that Phalantorrhynchus is a polyphyletic construct which needs to be thoroughly re-analysed in future.

In the case of the two samples of Otiorhynchus (s. str.) meridionalis Gyllenhal, 1834 included, one comes from Switzerland, Bern (sample 126), the other from southern France, Var (sample 129) and corresponds to the junior synonym O. civis Stierlin, 1861 . This result uncovers a synonymy proposed by the first author in Pelletier (2005: 111) and later implemented in Magnano & Alonso- Zarazaga (2013). The type specimens of O. civis in the Gustav Stierlin collection (conserved in the Deutsches Entomologisches Institut, Müncheberg, Senckenberg) were examined in 2005, and one male specimen with the following label data “Gall. mer.” [Gallia meridionale = southern France] is selected, and is here designated as lectotype, labelled with a red label: “LECTOTYPUS Otiorhynchus civis Stierlin 1861 des. C. Germann 2016”. The selection of the lectotype is of special importance, as Stierlin (1861) erroneously mentioned “Griechenland” [Greece] as type locality of O. civis . In his collection there was, among other specimens from southern France, also a female specimen from Greece determined as “ O. civis Stl. ”. However, O. meridionalis is not (yet probably, the species is currently spreading across Europe) known from Greece, and as already stated by Reitter (1913), the specimen from Greece is most likely mislabelled. Furthermore, it is a female specimen, whereas Stierlin (1861) clearly portrayed a male specimen in his description.

The examination of the penis, including the internal sac, did surprisingly not reveal any relevant differences in the two species (the main reason for the proposed synonymy in 2005), but the external morphology, supported here by the molecular data, allows a differentiation between the two species. Therefore Otiorhynchus civis Stierlin, 1861 stat. rev. is removed from the synonymy with O. meridionalis Gyllenhal, 1834. Figure 3 shows both species, the broad elytra and the rugose surface and the denser grey hairs on elytra of O. civis ( Fig. 3A ) allows a differentiation from O. meridionalis, where the elytra are more elongate oval and shiny ( Fig. 3B ; a differentiation already given by Reitter, 1913: 44). O. civis is – after present knowledge and specimens examined – still restricted to southern France, whereas O. meridionalis is recorded more and more from surrounding countries (details in Magnano & Alonso-Zarazaga, 2013 under meridionalis).

The third species of the O. meridionalis -species group in our data set is O. aurifer Boheman, 1842, is also included in our dataset and it is well separated ( Table 5).

Figures

Fig. 1. Best Maximum Likelihood tree as selected by MEGA) based on COI sequences of 142 samples of Curculionoidea (Chrysomelidae obtained by using MEGA 6. Values (over 50 %) of bootstrap support from 100 nodes.

Fig. 3. (A) Otiorhynchus civis Stierlin, 1861 stat. rev. (France, Var, Bargème). (B) O. meridionalis Gyllenhal, 1834 (Switzerland, Bern).