Abstract
The overall declining state of the western taxonomy is clearly documented by the present fate of the extremely high valued and huge unidentified caddisfly material collected in India and deposited in the Canadian National Collection. Due to the general lack of both financial and scientific resources in taxonomy, this huge collection remained almost untouched during the last 70 years after its collection. With a tribute to the collector, Fernand Schmid, the great caddisfly collector and taxonomist we have reconstructed his collecting activities of the five years in India by geolocalization and elaborated about ten percent of his undetermined Hydropsychidae in the Diplectroninae and Hydropsychinae subfamilies. Description of 145 new species from this small fragment of the huge unidentified collection demonstrates a pronounced underestimation of the biodiversity in general, routinely measured by gross phenomics. During this study we have reinstated the species status of seven taxa: Diplectrona kirimaduhela Sch
Highlights
We have carried out this study on a very small fragment of hydropsychid specimens from Schmid’s collection of Indian Trichoptera with description of 145 new species with our fine phenomics in order to demonstrate its huge diversity and extremely high scientific value
This species having dorsoapicad produced spiny structure on the paraproct belongs to the Diplectrona aurowittata new species group, and supplied with double pointed spines belongs to the Diplectrona hasada new species complex
This species having dorsoapicad produced spiny structure on the paraproct belongs to the Diplectrona aurowittata new species group, and to the Diplectrona tamdaophila new species complex
Summary
We have carried out this study on a very small fragment of hydropsychid specimens from Schmid’s collection of Indian Trichoptera with description of 145 new species with our fine phenomics in order to demonstrate its huge diversity and extremely high scientific value. First and foremost we wish to thank for this hydropsychine material we have elaborated in this paper and to express our acknowledgement to Fernand Schmid (1924, Sion, Switzerland – 1998, Ottawa, Canada), the Great Trichopterologist, the Ultimate Collector of caddisflies and the teacher of the first author. Soon after completing his groundbreaking research, synthesis and revision, on Limnephilidae family (Weaver & Nimmo 1999), he made several long-lasting and wide-ranging collecting expeditions to Pakistan (1953–1954), Ceylon (1954: Sri Lanka), Iran (1955–1956), and to India (1958–1962). He spent at least nine months of the year in the field for four years straight in India, except for 1960, when he was there for seven months (Lonsdale 2000)
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