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Einfeldia dissidens

Started by Laci Hamerlik, November 12, 2015, 02:19:55 PM

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Laci Hamerlik

Hi everybody!

I have identified a pupal exuvia as Einfeldia dissidens (using Langton, 1991). I tried to find it at Fauna Europea, but the species is not listed within the Einfeldia genus. Do you know why? Was it moved to another genus? Was the name changed for something else? I guess it is not because the species does not occur in Europe...

Thanks for help!

Laci

Martin Spies

#1
Dear Laci,

The name used as valid for this species in Fauna Europaea (FaEu) is Benthalia carbonaria (Meigen), with Chironomus dissidens Walker as a junior synonym. The synonymy follows Shilova (1980) and observations of my own from quite a lot of material by which all adult and pupal character states proposed as separating carbonaria and dissidens appear as parts of respective ranges that are linked by intermediates.

Consequently, Shilova, a number of other colleagues and I took/have taken the two larval morphotypes - with or without ventral tubuli near the end of the abdomen - as variation subject to the environmental conditions in which the larvae develop. Similar phenomena have been documented in some species of Chironomus, so ...

At the same time, it must be said that other colleagues have not subscribed to the above interpretation, thus continue to treat carbonaria and dissidens as separate species. Some of those colleagues even continue to place these forms in an Einfeldia sensu lato, even though all life stages of members of Benthalia differ from those of all other species included in Einfeldia s. l. Moreover, that wide concept of Einfeldia was a big mistake from the beginning. For example, it lumped together various species on the basis of supposed 'Einfeldia-like' superior volsellae of the adult males, even though several earlier authors (e.g., Kruseman 1933) had demonstrated that such volsellae occur in individual members of quite many Chironomini genera, some of which are very far apart phylogenetically (e.g., Chironomus and Tribelos).

The genus name Benthalia Lipina, 1939 has been nomenclaturally available all along, thus may be taken out of the previous synonymy with Chironomus Meigen and used as valid for a subgenus or genus at any time and without any ado. The justification for applying it as Ole Sæther and I have done in FaEu is not only morphological but also based on molecular data (e.g., Martin et al. 2007 in the blue book published on the occasion of Ole's 70th birthday).

If anyone has any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Kind regards,

Martin Spies

By the way:

As with all other species-level names in the Fauna Europaea database, if you go to http://www.faunaeur.org/ and search using  dissidens  in the "(Sub) species" field, the corresponding entry is found quickly.

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