Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Apr 7:9:e64486.
doi: 10.3897/BDJ.9.e64486. eCollection 2021.

Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n. (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae), a new species from Bjeshkët e Nemuna National Park in the Republic of Kosovo, with molecular and ecological notes

Halil Ibrahimi  1 , Astrit Bilalli  2 , Simon Vitecek  3   4   5 , Steffen U Pauls  6   7 , Felicitas Erzinger  8 , Agim Gashi  1 , Linda Grapci Kotori  1 , Donard Geci  1 , Milaim Musliu  2 , Edison Kasumaj  1
Affiliations

Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n. (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae), a new species from Bjeshkët e Nemuna National Park in the Republic of Kosovo, with molecular and ecological notes

Halil Ibrahimi et al. Biodivers Data J. .

Abstract

Background: The Western Balkans are an important hotspot of caddisfly diversity in Europe, with several microscale endemics, many of which were discovered during the recent years. The genus Potamophylax Wallengren, 1891 likely originated and diversified in Europe, with the Balkan Peninsula being one of the most important diversity hotspots.

New information: In this paper, we describe the new species Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n. from Bjeshkët e Nemuna National Park in the Republic of Kosovo. The new species belongs to the Potamophylax winneguthi species group and is morphologically most similar to Potamophylax juliani Kumanski, 1999, currently known only from Bulgaria and Potamophylax winneguthi Klapalek, 1902, known from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. The male of the new species differs from its most similar congeners mainly in exhibiting: (1) elongated subrectangular superior appendages in lateral view; (2) hardly acuminate, almost rounded apex of intermediate appendages; (3) differently shaped, irregular and higher inferior appendages; (4) narrow spinate area, roughly rectangular in dorsal view, slightly wider at the base and (5) different paramere shape and/or spine pattern. The new species also differs by its considerably smaller size and association with open, high altitude eucrenal zones.The uncorrected interspecific pairwise distance between P. coronavirus and other species of the P. winneguthi species group is on par with those amongst other recognised species in the group, as well as with the yet ambiguously identified taxa from the Sharr, Rila and Bajgorë Mountains.The new species is most probably a microendemic of Bjeshkët e Nemuna, thus highlighting further this area as an important hotspot of caddisfly biodiversity in Europe.

Keywords: Balkans; Potamophylax winneguthi species group; caddisflies; microscale endemism; rare species.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Pictures of type locality of Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n.: Krojet e Ali Pashë Gucisë.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Adults of Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n. in copulation.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Male adult of Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Left lateral view of the male genitalia of Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n. VIII - tergite VIII, IX - segment IX, ia - inferior appendages, ima - intermediate appendages, sa - superior appendages.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Caudal (A) and dorsal (B) view of the male genitalia of Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n. VIII - tergite VIII, ia - inferior appendages, ima - intermediate appendages, sa - superior appendages.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Aedeagus (a) and parameres (p) of the male genitalia of Potamophylax coronavirus sp. n. in lateral (A) and ventral view (B).
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Maximum Likelihood tree of phylogenetic relationships within the Potamophylax winneguthi species group and closely related congeners. The P. winneguthi group comprises a highly supported clade with new species P. coronavirus sp. n. supported as sister to other species of the group, including yet ambiguously identified taxa from the Sharr, Rila and Bajgorë Mountains. Support from SH-like approximate likelihood ratio tests/Ultrafast Bootstrap/Bayesian posterior probabilities are presented above nodes; outgroup: Melampophylax austriacus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bouckaert R., Heled J., Khnert D., Vaughan T., Wu c-H., Xie D., Suchard M. A., Rambaut A., Drummond A. J. BEAST 2: a software platform for Bayesian evolutionary analysis. PLOS Computational Biology. 2014;10:e1003537. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003537. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bouckaert R. R., Drummond A. J. bModelTest: Bayesian phylogenetic site model averaging and model comparison. BMC Evolutionary Biology. 2017;17:42. doi: 10.1186/s12862-017-0890-6. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Darılmaz M. C., Salur A. Annotated Catalogue of the Turkish Caddisflies (Insecta: Trichoptera) Munis Entomology & Zoology. 2015;10(Supp.):521–734.
    1. Graf W., Murphy J., Dahl J., Zamora-Muñoz C., López-Rodríguez M. J. Volume 1 - Trichoptera. In: Schmidt Kloiber A, Hering D (Eds.), Distribution and ecological preferences of European freshwater organisms. Pensoft Publishers; 2008. 338
    1. Guindon S., Dufayard J. F., Lefort V., Anisimova M., Hordijk W., Gascuel O. New algorithms and methods to estimate maximum-likelihood phylogenies: assessing the performance of PhyML 3.0. Systematic Biology. 2010;59(3):307–321. doi: 10.1093/sysbio/syq010. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources