Dorcus koreanus Jang and Kawai, 2008 was recently described as a valid species in Haenam, South Korea, based on morphology. However, the taxonomic position and relationships of this new species with the related species Dorcus japonicus and Dorcus carinulatus were not examined in detail. To address this issue, we evaluated the phylogenetic relationships of D. koreanus to its related species based on molecular analyses of mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene sequences. The molecular evidence suggested that D. koreanus and D. carinulatus are more closely related to each other than either is to D. Japonicus. The genetic divergence between D. koreanus and D. carinulatus ranged from 1.2 to 1.6%, whereas that between D. koreanus and D. japonicus ranged from 9.0 to 9.2%. By comparing the range of nucleotide substitutions within Lucanidae, we determined that the sequence distance between D. koreanus and D. carinulatus is smaller than that for required for species-level distinction. Therefore, we reduce D. koreanus to subspecies rank, as Dorcus carinulatus koreanus stat. nov.

A new species is described belonging to the subgenus Sabikikorius of Agrypnus, Agrypnus (Sabikikorius) uidoensis sp. nov., and isolated from the sand dunes of Ui-do Island, Korea. A key to the species is given with distributional information for each species of this subgenus. Sequencing data of the mitochondrial genes encoding COI (cytochrome c oxidase I) and 16S rDNA (16S ribosomal DNA) are also provided.

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Both the color patterns of the body and the structures of the male genitalia are important characters used in speciesidentification of traditional taxonomy. However, these characters are often limiting when identifying females of somespecies. In this study, we attempted to evaluate the species reality of Asiopodabrus fragiliformis which often has difficultyin being identified due to individual variation in color pattern and lack of female information. Using DNA barcoding, A.fragiliformis was represented as having three clades strongly supported by a high bootstrap value (>99%) and with over3% branch lengths having a 2.9–3.4% barcoding gap. Morphological reexamination based on the result of DNAbarcoding, demonstrated three clades: A. fragiliformis, A. kurvatovi, and A. koryeoensis n. sp., respectively, that wereclarified based on subtle difference in both male and female morphological characters. This study explicitly showed thatDNA barcoding may clearly and rapidly decide the species delineation for morpho-species in certain cases when the identification of female specimens is not clear using traditional methods.

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