Insect (Coleoptera and Orthoptera) Species of İstanbul in the Zoology Collection of Istanbul University
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Insect (Coleoptera and Orthoptera) species of İstanbul in the Zoology Collection of Istanbul University Fatih DİKMEN*, Oya ÖZULUĞ İstanbul University Faculty of Science, Department of Biology, Vezneciler-İstanbul *correspondence: [email protected] Received: 31/12/2017 Abstract Accepted: 16/01/2018 Research Article Zoology Collection of İstanbul University has a unique position Vol. 2, No.1, pp:27-43, 2018 among other institutional collections found in Turkey. This collection has very oldest insect specimens recorded from Turkey and especially Keywords: from all around İstanbul. Actually the collection owes this uniqueness Insecta, to a hobbyist, Bernard Tubini. His personal collection which contains Coleoptera, specimens collected from 1920 to 1940 was later donated to the Orthoptera, İstanbul University. However this special collection has never been Tubini Collection, studied, nor documented so far. In this study we aimed to make a Turkey checklist of the insect species of İstanbul from the Zoology Collection of İstanbul University and by the way take Tubini collection out into daylight. As a result, beyond seven Orthoptera species, 313 species of Coleoptera were listed from the collection. Introduction There are about one million described (named) insect species in the world (Grimaldi & Engel, 2005). That amount is nearly three-quarters of all known animal species (Clapham et al., 2016). Because of that they can easily be qualified as the dominant animal group of earth (Boror et al., 1989). This vast amount in the nature directly and indirectly affect human life. They may dominate food chains and food webs (Gullan & Cranston, 2010). They can be a subject in culture, literature or art (such as scarabs and jewel beetles); ingredient in cosmetics (such as bee wax and cochineal dye); food source (insect itself or its product like honey); medical issue as a vector organism (mosquitoes) or an allergen by stinging or direct contact (sting of bees and wasps, lepidopteran caterpillars’ skin); agricultural or forestry pests or oppositely beneficial organisms as a biological control agent (Kondo, 2012). They may also be a keystone species due to their critical roles in the ecosystem (Gullan & Cranston, 2010). Such importance and diversity influenced many naturalists, scientists and even many hobbyists in the past (Gullan & Cranston, 2010). Due to this many people have been collecting insects and preserving them as a collection item in either institutional museums or in their private collections. Today it was noted that only institutional collections worldwide house an estimated 3 billion preserved insect specimens in total (Colvin, 2014). 27 Dikmen & Özuluğ: Insect species of İstanbul Turkish Journal of Bioscience and Collections, Vol.2, Number 1, 2018 By the help of this old hobby or tradition we are able to compare alive species with the museum specimens. The data gathered from that comparison would lead us to provide some information about climate change, habitat destruction due to anthropogenic activity and the resulting distributional changes over time (Colvin, 2014). Moreover, such collections may also provide us many benefits in rapid identification of unknown specimens, offering a lens into the past, holding a huge material for exhibitions, and giving an essential reference for the further studies. Because of these factors holding an institutional insect collection is vital for any kind of systematical and ecological studies for the countries. In Turkey there are various kinds of insect collections in many institutes. Among them, the Zoology Collection of İstanbul University holds a unique position. This collection houses about two thousand of insect specimens in total. However the originality of the collection is not about the number of insect species or specimens it contains but about the antiquity of the collections. Especially one part of the collection belongs to Bernard Tubini. Beyond his profession as an educator, Bernard Tubini was an amateur entomologist who loves to collect insects. He enlarged his personal collection by own efforts. As far as we understand he made field studies and also loaned some specimen from all over the world. Since he lived in İstanbul, he collected many insects, especially Coleoptera specimens. After his death, inheritors donated his personal insect collection to İstanbul University by 1944. This donation has made an invaluable contribution to our zoology collection. There are five major insect orders (Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, and Hemiptera) according to their species richness (Gullan & Cranston, 2010). Coleoptera by representing the 40% of all known insect species (ca. 350.000) is by far the most crowded and largest insect order (Gullan & Cranston, 2010). Lepidoptera comes next with about 150.000 described species (Gullan & Cranston, 2010). Due to these facts, our collection mainly contains Coleoptera and Lepidoptera members. Luckily, Lepidoptera members were evaluated and published by various studies in the past (Şengün & Güneyi, 1968; Güneyi & Şengün, 1972a; Güneyi & Şengün, 1972b). However, for other groups and especially for the members of Coleoptera there have been no studies done so far. Since the university revolution happened in Turkey in 1933, Tubini collection, which covers insect specimens from 1926 to 1940, became one of the oldest institutional collection for us. Moreover, nobody had been documented any study on this collection so far. So this study will be the first record or checklist for this collection ever. In addition, the studies focusing on the insect fauna of İstanbul are very rare in the literature, as well. Because of this we aimed to fulfil this gap by making the checklist of the insect species of İstanbul from the Zoology Collection of İstanbul University in this study. That also covers the majority of the Tubini collection stored in our collection, as well. Material and Method Tubini Collection consisted of four cabinets (Fig.1) and forty drawer like Fig.2-3 at all. These specimens were collected and deposited between 1920-1940 years (Fig.4). In this study Tubini Collection was indicated with the catalog code (C.N. in Table 1) started by “T”. Apart from Tubini collection, there are some specimens collected between 1945 and 1965 were also added to the study. These specimens were deposited in the cabitnet 24 and indicated with catalog code (C.N. in Table 1) as “D.24.C”. After these codes, number of the drawers and specimen number were also indicated as C.N. in Table 1. For example, for “T.3.09-784.29”; “T” means Tubini Collection, “3” comes after “T” refers the cabinet number, “09-784” refers drawer number and “29” is the specimen number in the drawer. Before analyzing the specimens all drawers were photographed by digital camera and tried to make a digital database for all. Then specimens were carefully inspected according to their label data. The insects that have no labels or data about İstanbul excluded from the study. Some labels were containing full date data. But the majority was just containing the information about collection month. In the checklist we tried to give location and date information in order to make any contribution to the current phenology and distribution knowledge of the species. 28 Dikmen & Özuluğ: Insect species of İstanbul Turkish Journal of Bioscience and Collections, Vol.2, Number 1, 2018 The species and the generic names on the label of the specimens were checked, synonyms, misspelled words are corrected according to the Fauna Europaea (2017), Discover Life (2017), IUCN (2017), UK Beetle Recording (2017), Barsevskis et al. (2017) and Muséum national d’Histoire natürelle (2017) databases. Also taxonomic ranks of the groups were evaluated according to the Fauna Europaea database and Borror et al. (1989). Figure 1: Front label of the fourth cabinet of Tubini Collection. Figure 2: Tubini Collection, 2nd cabinet, 6th drawer. 29 Dikmen & Özuluğ: Insect species of İstanbul Turkish Journal of Bioscience and Collections, Vol.2, Number 1, 2018 Figure 3: Tubini Collection, 3rd cabinet, 4th drawer. Figure 4: Male and female Polyphylla fullo specimens from Rumeli Hisarı (R.H), date: VIII.1932. 30 Dikmen & Özuluğ: Insect species of İstanbul Turkish Journal of Bioscience and Collections, Vol.2, Number 1, 2018 Results As a result, 334 taxon were listed with four duplicates. Besides, four taxon were listed with only genus names (with “sp.” abbreviation). In addition, there were six dubious taxonomic names which were indicated with “?” mark in the “valid name” column of the Table 1. From the rest, 320 valid species listed. Among, only seven species were Orthoptera members. Apart from the dubious names and duplicates, 313 species were listed that belong to the order Coleoptera. All of the species names were italicized and given in the Table 1 in alphabetical order of the family names. Table 1: The list of the insect species of İstanbul found in Zoology Collection of Istanbul University. “?” mark indicates no data; “*” inditcates Orthoptera member; C.N: Catalog number; S.: Sampling month; L.: Location. Name on Family Valid Name C. N. L. S. the Label Notostaurus Notostaurus anatolicus (Krauss, D.24. Acrididae* Yeşilköy Sept. anatolicus 1896) C.17.01 Calliptamus D.24. B.çekmece, Acrididae* Calliptamus italicus Aug. Italicus L. C.01.03 Belgrad Dorcatoma Dorcatoma dresdensis Herbst, T.3.09- Anobiidae Domuzdere ? dresdensis 1792 784.29 T.3.09- Anobiidae Xyletinus ater Xyletinus ater (Creutz., 1796) Maslak June 784.28 T.3.09-