Lucanidae

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18.09.2012 12:54, sebastes

Good day to all! In the Crimea, I caught three dorcus, the question is, is it parallelipipidus or kaukasikus? The far left is from the Tuapse district - from Nebuga, with a clear parallelipipidus. Three: first and last under a log of rock oak, Livadia, h~110m., middle-from the Grand Canyon of the Crimea, h~230m.

I will quote here an excerpt from a letter from A. Klimenko, who, at my request, once studied this issue.

"...Dorcus caucasicus Ganglbauer, 1886 is a synonym. This name has long appeared in various sources for the Caucasian form D. parallelipipedus as a synonym, then as a subspecies, then as a separate close species. The Caucasian specimens in the series differ markedly from the lowland European specimens with a stronger gloss, a more pronounced surface relief (coarser wrinkles), and a slightly different shape of the male mandibles (this is most noticeable in individuals from Talysh and neighboring Iran. That form probably deserves subspecies status, but the traditional interpretation of kavkazikus applied to all populations south of the main Caucasus). However, not so long ago it turned out that the only specimen (type) that served as Ganglbauer's description was incorrectly labelled (this has happened repeatedly in the past), and has nothing in common at all with Palearctic species, but is identical to one of the North American ones. So, it's a really nice view, but...not ours. So it happens. Below is an extract from the catalog of nearctic fauna (with synonymy):

Dorcus brevis Say, 1825
(=Dorcus caucasicus Ganglbauer, 1886) ..."

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