[Taxacom] Coleoptera question: Bromius obscurus or not

[Stephen Thorpe]

Dear Soowon:
The external morphological differences between imaged specimens are certainly significant. The fact that the species is supposedly apomictic poses something of a complication. However, I recently discovered male weevils of a supposedly apomictic species, so maybe???? you too have found males! On the other hand, it could be an entirely unrelated, but superficially similar eumolpine, as far as I know. They are a big and morphologically quite conservative group. There does not seem to be any recent taxonomic work published on the genus. I suggest that you compare Korean material with Japanese...
Cheers,
Stephen

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Soowon Cho [chosoowon at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, 17 September 2009 6:06 p.m.
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [Taxacom] Coleoptera question: Bromius obscurus or not

Dear members,

I found the insect reported as Bromius obscurus (Linne) in Korea looks
slightly different from the original B. obscurus in Europe (e.g., different
length of antennae, or different head angle, etc.). This is a pest species
on grapes and is known to be mainly parthenogenetic. Two main color
variations are found in Europe but only one color pattern has been found in
Korea.

I wonder if the insect in Korea is same as the one in Europe. I wish I could
compare their genetic sequences such as COI barcodes but no B. obscurus
barcode is uploaded in the GenBank or BOLD database. Could anyone possibly
help me solving my curiosity by sending me a few specimens or its barcode
sequence of the European species? Or, do you think they are the same
species? Since I am not a coleopterist, please let me know your professional
opinion. I put some adult images of them in my website:
http://web.chungbuk.ac.kr/~soowon/ (First three images (European ones) are
from the Internet and the next three images (Korean ones) are what I took or
from the Internet.)

Sincerely,

--
Soowon Cho
chosoowon at gmail.com
Dept Plant Medicine
Chungbuk Nat'l Univ
Cheongju, 361-763
KOREA
_______________________________________________

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