Abstract
Psectrascelis is one of the most specious genus of darkling beetles of South America, comprising 82 species that inhabit arid and semiarid environments. The species are distributed mainly in Argentina and Chile. In general, the taxonomy of several species in this group has been difficult to approach. An example is Psectrascelis pilosa Solier and Psectrascelis conjugens Fairmaire, species morphologically similar which presents a rather poor original description and mislabelled. These species are distributed sympatrically in coastal terraces at the northern side of Huasco river, northern Chile. We collected several specimens of Psectrascelis on the southern side of Huasco river which are morphologically similar to P. pilosa. Morphological and genetic analysis support the description of the species Psectrascelis ammophila sp. nov., which is more closely related to Psectrascelis elongata and Psectrascelis pilipes specularis than other morphologically similar species (Psectrascelis pilosa and Psectrascelis conjugens). The importance of the Huasco river as barrier and the evolutionary convergence is discussed to explain the crypsis and the phylogenetic pattern found.
References
Cid-Arcos, M. & Campódonico, J.F. (2017) Nueva especie de Psectrascelis Solier (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) de la Región del Maule, Chile. Revista Chilena de Entomología, 43, 55–60.
Fairmaire, L. (1876) Révision des coléoptères du Chili. Famille des Tenebrionidae, Tribu des Nyctélites. Annales de la Société Entomologique de France, 5, 341–83.
Flores, G.E. (1996) Estudio comparativo de las estructuras genitales en la tribu Nycteliini (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Revista de la Sociedad Entomológica Argentina, 55, 33–48.
Flores, G.E. (1997) Revisión de la tribu Nycteliini (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Revista de la Sociedad Entomológica Argentina, 56, 1–19.
Flores, G.E. (2000) Cladistic analysis of the Neotropical tribe Nycteliini (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Journal of New York Entomological Society, 108, 13–25.
https://doi.org/10.1664/0028-7199(2000)108[0013:CAOTNT]2.0.CO;2
Flores, G.E. (2007) Two new species of Psectrascelis (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) from western Argentina. Revista de la Sociedad Entomológica Argentina, 66 (3–4), 91–97.
Guerrero, M. & Diéguez, V.M. (2018) Redescubrimiento de Gyriosomus kulzeri Peña (Tenebrionidae: Nycteliini): una especie poco conocida del Desierto de Atacama, Chile. Revista Chilena de Entomología, 44 (1), 9–13.
Guerrero, M. & Vidal, P. (2018) Nueva especie del género Gyriosomus Guérin-Méneville (Tenebrionidae: Nycteliini) de Chile. Revista Chilena de Entomología, 44 (1), 93–98.
Hall, T.A. (1999) BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nucleic Acids Symposium Series, 41, 95–98.
Huelsenbeck, J. & Ronquist, V.M. (2001) MRBAYES: Bayesian inference of phylogeny. Bioinformatics, 17, 754–755.
https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/17.8.754
Iwan, D. & Kamiński, M.J. (2016) Toward a natural classification of opatrine darkling beetles: comparative study of female terminalia. Zoomorphology, 135, 453–485.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-016-0328-5
Kamiński, M.J., Gearner, O.M., Kanda, K., Swichtenberg, K., Purchart, L. & Smith, A.D. (2020) First insights into the phylogeny of tok-tokkie beetles (Tenebrionidae: Molurina, Phanerotomeina), and examination of the status of the Psammodes vialis species-group. Zoological Journals of the Linnean Society, zlaa052. [published online]
https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaa052
Miller, M.A., Pfeiffer, W. & Schwartz, T. (2010) Creating the CIPRES Science Gateway for inference of large phylogenetic trees. In: Proceedings of the Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE). IEEE publications, New Orleans, Louisiana, pp. 1–8.
https://doi.org/10.1109/GCE.2010.5676129
Peña, L.E. (1966) A preliminary attempt to divide Chile into entomofaunal regions, based on the Tenebrionidae (Coleoptera). Postilla, 97, 1–17.
Peña, L.E. (1985) Revisión del género Psectrascelis Solier (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Revista Chilena de Entomología, 12, 15–51.
Solier, J. (1851) Insectos: Coleópteros. In: Gay, C. (Ed.), Historia Física y Política de Chile. Zoología. Tomo 5. Imprenta Maulde et Renou, Paris, pp. 1–285.
Vidal, P. & Guerrero, M. (2007) Los Tenebriónidos de Chile. 1a edición. Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, 478 pp.
Zúñiga-Reinoso, A. & Jerez, V. (2012) Revisión del estado taxonómico de Nyctelia multicristata Blanchard, 1846 y descripción de Nyctelia confusa Zuñiga-Reinoso n. sp. (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Gayana, 76 (1), 38–45.
https://doi.org/10.4067/S0717-65382012000200004
Zúñiga-Reinoso, A. & Flores, G.E. (2013) Primer registro de Psectrascelis sulcicollis (Waterhouse, 1841) para Chile (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) y primer registro del género para la Región de Magallanes. Anales del Instituto de la Patagonia, 41 (2), 99–106.
https://doi.org/10.4067/S0718-686X2013000200009
Zúñiga-Reinoso, A., Pinto, P. & Larrea, S. (2017) Una nueva especie de Callyntra (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) para la costa de Chile central, Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad, 88, 307–311.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmb.2017.03.024
Zúñiga-Reinoso, A. & Méndez, M.A. (2018) Hidden and cryptic species reflect parallel and correlated evolution in the phylogeny of the genus Callyntra (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) of Central Chile. Molecular Phylogenetic and Evolution, 127, 405–415.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2018.04.022
Zúñiga-Reinoso, A., Pinto, P. & Collado, G.A. (2018) No more machismo in Callyntra (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae): Callyntra femina, a new species discovered based on female genitalia and genetic evidence. Zootaxa, 4461 (3), 429–437.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4464.3.8
Zúñiga-Reinoso, A., Pinto, P. & Predel, P. (2019) A new a species of Gyriosomus Guérin-Méneville, 1834 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) from the Chilean Atacama Desert. Annales Zoologici, 69, 105–112.
https://doi.org/10.3161/00034541ANZ2019.69.1.006