Chironomus calligraphus Goeldi, 1905 and C. hawaiiensis Grimshaw, 1901 are sibling species

Abstract

Although Spies et al.’s (2002) thorough analysis of a small sample of the then available specimens of Chironomus calligraphus Goeldi,1905 suggested two distinctly different haplotypes in the mitochondrial COII gene, the corresponding morphological and cytological evidence kept the authors from concluding that there were two species involved. Further obstacles were unusual aspects of the molecular data and the occurrence of both these haplotypes in samples from the Brazilian type locality by Fittkau (1965) from which he had fixed a neotype. This neotype is slide mounted and can no longer yield molecular data. The present author’s analysis of additional material, including the available BARCODE sequences, has confirmed the existence of two forms, perhaps consistent with those found in the COII analysis, and with largely overlapping geographic distributions. One of these forms occurs in Hawaii where it is morphologically indistinguishable from C. hawaiiensis Grimshaw, 1901. It is recommended to apply this name, which takes nomenclatural precedence to the form found in Hawaii, and the name C. calligraphus to the form found to be more common in Fittkau’s type-locality samples.