Abstract
There remain some difficulties in delimitation of related genera or sibling species for cantharid beetles, because the traditionally taxonomic method and morphological characters have not been updated or introduced. In the present study, we firstly use the landmark-based geometric morphometrics to analyze and compare the hind wings of nine species belonging to three genera of Cantharinae to ascertain whether this approach may be used as a reliable method in the study of the taxonomy of this group. The results show that the shape differences of the hind wings among genera seem more variable than that within each genus, and the variations for each species are different from one another, as shown in the principal component analyses. And the canonical variates analyses show that there are significant differences among the genera and the species of each genus, which demonstrates that the hind wing shape can be diagnostic for both generic and specific identification of the cantharid beetles. This study sheds new light into clarifying the taxonomic uncertainties of Cantharidae, and lays a foundation for further studies on the evolution of the cantharid hind wing shape.
Highlights
The Cantharinae represents a subfamily of beetles belonging to the family Cantharidae (Bouchard et al 2011)
The thin plate spline visualizations show that the medial area contributes most to the shape differences among the genera, especially the situation of the junction of MP4 and MP3 (No 10) is most variable in Themus, while least in Lycocerus, and similar for the junction of ScP and RA (No 1)
The result of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) shows that the shape differences of the hind wings among the genera Lycocerus, Prothemus and Themus (Fig. 2A) are mostly associated with the junctions of MP4 and MP3 (No 10), ScP and RA (No 1), r4 and RP (No 6) and RP and MP1+2 (No 7), and the shape of Themus is much more different from that of Lycocerus than Prothemus
Summary
The Cantharinae represents a subfamily of beetles belonging to the family Cantharidae (Bouchard et al 2011). It is not easy to clarify the status of some species among the related genera, such as Habronychus (Monohabronychus) multilimbatus (Pic, 1910), which was transferred several times (Okushima 2003, Švihla 2004, Brancucci 2007) in the Stenothemus genera complex (Švihla 2004). These difficulties underline the need for further studies to clarify the taxonomy of cantharid beetles either by searching for new morphological characters of high diagnostic value or applying alternative effective methods
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