A new Colombian species of Liodessus diving beetles from the Páramo de Sumapaz (Coleoptera, Dytiscidae, Bidessini)

Abstract

Liodessus picinussp. nov. is described from the Páramo de Sumapaz near Bogota D.C. at 3,500 m above sea level. The species can be distinguished from the other Colombian Liodessus species by its dark coloration, discontinuous habitus, shiny surface of the pronotum and elytron, presence of a distinct occipital line, distinct basal pronotal striae, short or even faint basal elytral striae, as well as by its distinct geographic distribution and cox1 signature.

Eastern Colombian Páramo Liodessus Guignot, 1939 diving beetles are genetically structured, but show signs of hybridization, with description of new species and subspecies (Coleoptera, Dytiscidae)

“…To address this integrating morphological as well as molecular evidence, we are building a DNA sequence-based platform for the study of these insects, using the Barcode of Life Data System ( BOLD ) of the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding and the 5' mitochondrial Cox1 gene fragment ( www.boldsystems.org ; Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007 ). The rationale behind this approach was in detail described by Balke et al (2021b) . The public COLLI project on BOLD currently contains 276 sequences for the 5' end of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I for 14 species.…”

“…To date, three Liodessus species have been reported from the eastern Colombian branch of the Andes; i.e., L. bogotensis , L. lacunaviridis , and L. picinus ( Megna et al 2019 ; Balke et al 2021a , b ).…”