To be or not to be a synonym – revision of the Donacia clavareaui-fukiensis complex (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Donaciinae)

Abstract

The East Palaearctic species Donaciaclavareaui Jacobson, 1906 and Donaciafukiensis Goecke, 1944 have been confused for decades. Finally, D.fukiensis was synonymized with D.clavareaui by Askevold (1990) but he could not examine the type series of D.fukiensis because it was stored in an inaccessible collection. Cong and Yu (1997) re-established D.fukiensis as a distinct species, also without direct access to the type series. The synonymization by Askevold (1990) was applied in the identification key of Palaearctic Chrysomelidae (Warchalowski 2010) and the Catalogue of Palaearctic Chrysomelidae (Silfverberg 2010). Because the type series of D.fukiensis is now accessible, it has been possible to proof that D.fukiensis is a distinct species, and a lectotype has been established from the series of seven syntypes. Donaciakweilina Chen, 1966 and D.mediohirsuta Chen, 1966, which were split from the mixture of D.clavareaui and D.fukiensis, are now also synonymized with D.clavareaui, because their characters are the same or within the variation range of the characters of D.clavareaui. Furthermore, a distribution map is provided with the reliable records known to date.

Revision of the Palaearctic species of the genus Plateumaris C. G. Thomson, 1859 (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Donaciinae)

“…1758: Linnaeus described the genus Leptura with 22 species. Two of these species belong to the (later established) Donaciinae : Donacia aquatica and Plateumaris sericea ( Geiser and Geiser 2023 ). Linnaeus established only the taxonomic categories: classis – Coleoptera – genus – species, e.g.…”

“…Some original descriptions are in German, French, or Russian; some are multilingual, starting with Latin for the main characters of a presumed new species, and then more details were added in the native language of the author. Therefore, to overcome these challenges, Geiser and Geiser (2023) present the original descriptions and their translations of all Palaearctic Plateumaris species including many synonyms. That comprises seven species, because three were originally described in English, and 19 taxa are now synonyms.…”

“…This family includes more than 37,000 (probably at least 50,000) species in more than 2,500 genera, making up one of the largest beetle families ( Jolivet et al 1988 ). The Donaciinae comprise approximately 180 species belonging to six genera ( Geiser 2015 ). Seventeen species of Plateumaris occur in the Nearctic region ( Askevold 1991 ) and ten species in the Palaearctic region.…”

“…Many of these descriptions are in Latin or at least begin with Latin text. To make my arguments more understandable a companion article in this issue ( Geiser and Geiser 2023 ) is published, where translations are provided of many original descriptions into English.…”

Original descriptions of Palaearctic species of the genus Plateumaris C. G. Thomson, 1859 (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Donaciinae) and their translations

“…Nowadays, English is the worldwide communication language used in science. The second author is a classicist and an entomologist with profound knowledge in systematics who translated numerous original Latin descriptions of Donaciinae taxa in the last years for systematic studies by the first author, such as Donacia clavareaui Jacobson, 1906 ( Geiser 2019 ). Many translations are yet unpublished, but were used in Geiser and Jäch (2021) .…”