Euodynerus (Euodynerus) bidentatus puniceus Blüthgen, 1956

Selis, Marco, Fateryga, Alexander V. & Cilia, Giovanni, 2024, The genus Euodynerus Dalla Torre in Europe and the Maghreb (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae), Zootaxa 5537 (2), pp. 151-194 : 165

Euodynerus (Euodynerus) bidentatus puniceus Blüthgen, 1956

( Figs 4B, E )

Euodynerus bidentatus puniceus Blüthgen, 1956: 313 , ♀ — “Bu el Gheràb (Tripolitanien)” (MZUB [examined]).

Distribution. Libya, currently known only from the typical locality of Bi’r Bu al Ghurab ( Blüthgen 1956). As reported above, Giordani Soika (1953) recorded E. bidentatus from Libya (Gharyan and Cyrenaica), but the real identity of those records remains to be assessed.

Notes. Blüthgen (1956) described this taxon as a Libyan subspecies of the western Maghrebi Euodynerus bidentatus (Lepeletier) , differentiating it by the reduced and ferruginous markings only ( Figs 4B, E ). Other than the pattern, the comparison of two female specimens of E. bidentatus puniceus , including the holotype, with several specimens of the nominotypical subspecies revealed two additional subtle differences in sculpture: clypeus with more defined punctures less tending to form longitudinal striae and mesoscutum and metasoma with slightly sparser punctures. In addition, DNA barcoding of one of the two specimens resulted in a sequence presenting a genetic distance of 6.64% from the nominotypical subspecies ( Fig. 2 ). The weak morphological differences and the low genetic distance would suggest synonymizing the subspecies puniceus with the nominotypical one, however, the two subspecies do not seem to present intermediate forms as regards the chromatic pattern and the subspecies puniceus is currently known only from a very isolated locality in the Libyan desert, thus indicating a certain degree of isolation between the two populations. Since this could be a case analogous to what was observed in the Stenodynerus fastidiosissimus (de Saussure) / S. rufescens Giordani Soika pair ( Selis et al. 2024), in which the females do not show clear morphological differences, we prefer to maintain the subspecies puniceus pending the availability of more material and the discovery of its male.

Figures

FIGURE 2. Phylogenetic tree (Neighbor-Joining) of Euodynerus (Euodynerus) based on the mitochondrial COI gene. Ancistrocerus gazella (Panzer) was used as an outgroup. Numbers adjacent to branches represent bootstrap support (values of <75 are omitted); only the species occurring in the considered area are highlighted. Countries are abbreviated using ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes. Continues in Fig. 3.

FIGURE 4. A, C–D, Euodynerus bidentatus bidentatus (Lepeletier). A, D, female from Morocco. C, male from Morocco. B, E, Euodynerus bidentatus puniceus Blüthgen, female from Libya. F–I, Euodynerus caspicus (Morawitz). F, H, male from Astrakhan Province, Russia. G, I, female from Kazakhstan.