Scope of the taxon Oryctes nasicornis

Community and Forum → Taxonomy. Classification → Scope of the taxon Oryctes nasicornis

DYNASTES, 14.03.2015 20:11

Colleagues, coleopterists, there was a question about the volume of the seemingly banal taxon Oryctes nasicornis. The question concerns the current taxon scope, valid subspecies, and synonymy.

As I understood from sources (Roger-Paul Dechambre & Gilbert Lachaume Dynastidae. Le genre Oryctes, 2001. S. Endrodi The Dynastinae of the World. , 1985. Catalogue of Palaearctic Coleoptera — Vol. 3) foreign and not so many authors are inclined to allocate up to 19-20 subspecies of the rhinoceros beetle.

At the same time, in some cases there is a lack of reliable diagnostic features with a large variability even within a single population to distinguish such a number of subspecies.

One of the first revisions of the ode "Oryctes", was that in 1914-1916 by the German von Paul Minck.
he divided "Oryctes nasicomis" into 8 separate species and described a number of subspecies, some of them very dubious. Then in 1931 Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky and Medvedev reviewed the whole case. And in a later monograph by Medvedev from the series Fauna of the USSR, there were excellent views on subspecies, their number was very small, all populations from Europe and the European part of the USSR were considered as one subspecies. A number of subspecies were considered here as independent species.

I would like to hear opinions and current views on the whole matter.

This post was edited by DYNASTES - 14.03.2015 20: 17