Talk:Probergrothius
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Probergrothius angolensis/sexpunctatus
[edit]Dyanenga,
I hope this is the right place to respond to you. To answer your question... P. sexpunctatus and P. angolensis are separate species, not synonyms. I am aware of the publication "The Pyrrhocoroidea (Hemiptera – Heteroptera) of the Ethiopian region," and the issue is that the author there did not have access to P. angolensis specimens for comparison to the other Probergrothius species. This is because P. angolensis comes from Namibia and surrounding countries (on the other side of the continent, thus not in the Ethiopian region). A recent paper coming from other members of my lab in Germany "Evolutionary transition in symbiotic syndromes enabled diversification of phytophagous insects on an imbalanced diet" (Sudakaran et. al. 2015), used genotypic evidence that showed P. angolensis (collected on Welwitschia) and P. sexpunctatus (from the Ivory Coast) were genetically distinct.
We have gotten our taxonomic naming information from Dr. Juergen Deckert, who is a Pyrrhocoidae specialist at the Berlin Museum of Natural History. I too was confused about the actual identity of the insects, but Dr. Deckert has told me that the Welwitschia bug is indeed P. angolensis and not sexpunctatus. Another clue is that P. sexpunctatus, as it's name suggests, has six spots on its wings (3 per wing), while the Welwitschia bug (P. angolensis) only has two large spots.
Here are some images for comparison:
P. sexpunctatus (Not found on Welwitschia, six wing spots): - https://www.flickr.com/photos/33813110@N08/6783270353/in/gallery-144288833@N05-72157674049237262/ - https://www.flickr.com/photos/hvw/2144530874/in/gallery-144288833@N05-72157674049237262/ - https://www.flickr.com/photos/catsitchyfeet/4752183023/in/gallery-144288833@N05-72157674049237262/
P. angolensis (Welwitschia bug, two wing spots): - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ivl_wildlife_photography/23353377675/in/gallery-144288833@N05-72157674049237262/ - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ivl_wildlife_photography/23244990032/in/gallery-144288833@N05-72157674049237262/