University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Center for Systematic Entomology, Gainesville, Insecta Mundi Florida 2015 Morphological variability and evaluation of taxonomic characters in the genus Erythemis Hagen, 1861 (Odonata: Libellulidae: Sympetrinae) Fredy Palacino Rodríguez Universidad El Bosque Bogotá, Colombia, [email protected] Carlos E. Sarmiento Universidad El Bosque Bogotá, Colombia, [email protected] Enrique González-Soriano Universidad El Bosque Bogotá, Colombia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/insectamundi Rodríguez, Fredy Palacino; Sarmiento, Carlos E.; and González-Soriano, Enrique, "Morphological variability and evaluation of taxonomic characters in the genus Erythemis Hagen, 1861 (Odonata: Libellulidae: Sympetrinae)" (2015). Insecta Mundi. 933. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/insectamundi/933 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Systematic Entomology, Gainesville, Florida at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Insecta Mundi by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. INSECTA MUNDI A Journal of World Insect Systematics 0428 Morphological variability and evaluation of taxonomic characters in the genus Erythemis Hagen, 1861 (Odonata: Libellulidae: Sympetrinae) Fredy Palacino Rodríguez Laboratorio de Sistemática y Biología Comparada de Insectos Laboratorio de Artrópodos del Centro Internacional de Física Universidad Nacional de Colombia Grupo de Investigación en Biología (GRIB) Grupo de Investigación de Odonatos de Colombia (GINOCO) Universidad El Bosque Bogotá, Colombia Carlos E. Sarmiento Enrique González-Soriano Date of Issue: July 10, 2015 CENTER FOR SYSTEMATIC ENTOMOLOGY, INC., Gainesville, FL Fredy Palacino Rodríguez, Carlos E. Sarmiento, and Enrique González-Soriano Morphological variability and evaluation of taxonomic characters in the genus Erythemis Hagen, 1861 (Odonata: Libellulidae: Sympetrinae) Insecta Mundi 0428: 1–68 ZooBank Registered: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:A5F39894-9426-4F2C-89CC-E812671E85E4 Published in 2015 by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P. O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/ Insecta Mundi is a journal primarily devoted to insect systematics, but articles can be published on any non-marine arthropod. Topics considered for publication include systematics, taxonomy, nomenclature, checklists, faunal works, and natural history. Insecta Mundi will not consider works in the applied sciences (i.e. medical entomology, pest control research, etc.), and no longer publishes book reviews or editorials. Insecta Mundi publishes original research or discoveries in an inexpensive and timely manner, distributing them free via open access on the internet on the date of publication. Insecta Mundi is referenced or abstracted by several sources including the Zoological Record, CAB Ab- stracts, etc. Insecta Mundi is published irregularly throughout the year, with completed manuscripts assigned an individual number. Manuscripts must be peer reviewed prior to submission, after which they are reviewed by the editorial board to ensure quality. One author of each submitted manuscript must be a current member of the Center for Systematic Entomology. Chief Editor: Paul E. Skelley, e-mail: [email protected] Assistant Editor: David Plotkin, e-mail: [email protected] Head Layout Editor: Eugenio H. Nearns Editorial Board: J. H. Frank, M. J. Paulsen, Michael C. Thomas Review Editors: Listed on the Insecta Mundi webpage Manuscript Preparation Guidelines and Submission Requirements available on the Insecta Mundi web- page at: http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/insectamundi/ Printed copies (ISSN 0749-6737) annually deposited in libraries: CSIRO, Canberra, ACT, Australia Museu de Zoologia, São Paulo, Brazil Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada The Natural History Museum, London, UK Muzeum i Instytut Zoologii PAN, Warsaw, Poland National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, USA Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Gainesville, FL, USA Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburg, Russia Electronic copies (Online ISSN 1942-1354, CDROM ISSN 1942-1362) in PDF format: Printed CD or DVD mailed to all members at end of year. Archived digitally by Portico. Florida Virtual Campus: http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/insectamundi University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Digital Commons: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/insectamundi/ Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-135240 Copyright held by the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Com- mons, Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Layout Editor for this article: Eugenio H. Nearns 0428: 1–68 2015 Morphological variability and evaluation of taxonomic characters in the genus Erythemis Hagen, 1861 (Odonata: Libellulidae: Sympetrinae) Fredy Palacino Rodríguez Laboratorio de Sistemática y Biología Comparada de Insectos, Universidad Nacional de Colombia Laboratorio de Artrópodos del Centro Internacional de Física, Universidad Nacional de Colombia Grupo de Investigación en Biología (GRIB) Grupo de Investigación de Odonatos de Colombia (GINOCO) Universidad El Bosque Bogotá, Colombia [email protected] Carlos E. Sarmiento [email protected] Enrique González-Soriano [email protected] Abstract. Erythemis Hagen, 1861 (Odonata: Libellulidae: Sympetrinae) is a Neotropical genus with ten species in which morphological characters vary widely. The aim of this paper is to study the taxonomic diversity of the genus Erythemis and to test the diagnostic value of morphological characters used to discriminate species. The diagnostic value of the morphometric characters is tested using discriminant function analysis, principal component analysis, and graphical exploration of the data. A total of 134 characters were studied; of those, 53 are recoded and 81 are proposed in this work. Discrete characters such as color, genitalia, ventral teeth of male cercus, extension of dark basal area in hind wing, and morphometric characters of abdominal carinae and antenodal wing venation are the most useful for species determination. In contrast, abdomen length/HW length ratio, vulvar lamina length, and spines of femoral structure are highly variable. A lectotype is designated for Diplax credula Hagen, 1861. Taxo- nomic keys for males and females are included, and variation in several characters is presented. Key words. Erythemis, morphometry, morphological characters Introduction The subfamily Sympetrinae includes over 200 species in 22 genera and is the largest Libellulidae subfamily (Pilgrim and von Dohlen 2008). This subfamily was defi ned by Fraser (1957) based on wing venation characters, but according to Pilgrim and von Dohlen (2008), these characters are problem- atic, because they are present in other libellulid subfamilies and thus are not synapomorphies that clearly defi ne the subfamily. Erythemis is one of its genera and was described by Hagen (1861) based on characters such as the shape of posterior lobe of prothorax, wing venation, genitalia, and the ratio between abdomen and wing length. Later on, Williamson (1923) provided a key to the ten described species of the genus and included characters of coloration, size of spines on the hind femur, genitalia, wing venation, size of carinae on the third abdominal segments, vulvar lamina length, and abdomen and wing length ratio. The species of Erythemis are easy to recognize, but some problems arise when using the key provided by Williamson (1923). For example, he indicated that the width of the fi rst three abdominal segments is different between species but offered no specifi c values for these limits; he also distinguished species based on coloration and wing venation, which according to our examination of specimens show high intraspecifi c variability that is not acknowledged in his publication, e.g. E. peruviana (Rambur, 1842), E. simplicollis (Say, 1840), E. collocata (Hagen, 1861), and E. plebeja (Burmeister, 1839). Williamson (1923) stated that vulvar lamina length is “specifi cally different,” but our examination of specimens showed overlap of this length. Sexual dimorphism in the species also causes problems in identifi cation because some characters show different patterns of variation in the two sexes. 1 2 • INSECTA MUNDI 0428, July 2015 PALACINO ET AL. Some authors have highlighted the need to analyze the morphological information of organisms through rigorous multivariate methods to delimit taxa and to provide accurate morphological dif- ferentiation (Longino 1993; Heraty and Polaszeck 2000; Kipling and Rubinoff 2004; MacLeod et al. 2007; Aguirre et al. 2011). Oliver and Beattie (1996), for example, found that a qualitative evaluation of characters is not enough to sort species as it usually overestimates species richness. On the other hand, the alternative approach of conducting morphometric analyses as done with damselfl ies