The difficult and controversial attribution of Hipparchia (Parahipparchia) populations to species or subspecies rank led us to use a comparative, quantitative approach to clarify evolutionary and taxonomic relationships among taxa. Seventeen populations from the Mediterranean area belonging to nine presumptive species or subspecies were sampled, and multivariate analyses were employed to study three character sets: allozymes, morphometric profiles of male genitalia, and quantitative descriptors of wing pattern and shape. Comparative analyses of distance matrices, trees and ordination patterns enabled us to outline evolutionary relationships among taxa and to assess the relative value of each character set. Congruent relationships among taxa were obtained from allozymes and male genital morphometrics, suggesting that divergence in genital morphology is a fairly good marker of the overall genetic divergence. O n the other hand, discordant results from wing pattern descriptors suggest these might be subjected to different evolutionary trajectories and rates because of their particular adaptive significance, and might not represent reliable tracers of phylogeny.
We report data on the spatial structure and seasonal variation of the community of Valmarino cave, a medium sized sandstone cave, located a few kilometres from the coast line, in Central Italy. Due to both its habitat features and its relatively recent geological history, Valmarino cave is only inhabited by terrestrial, troglophilic elements, i.e, facultative cave dwellers. By means of monthly censuses and density plot estimates we have investigated species abundance, diversity and their spatial organization, by considering separately samples from different cave sectors. Homogeneous sampling design allowed to compare series of samplings performed in 1974 and 1994. On the whole 21 arthropods and one snail species constitute the cave community. Ordination plots resulting from correspondence analyses of monthly samples outline a distinct spatial and temporal structure. Two main sub-communities can be identified: a inner subcommunity, mainly represented by eu-troglophilic species, showing a remarkable stability throughout the year and an outer sub-community, mainly represented by sub-troglophilic species, showing strong seasonal variation. Both spatial and temporal vectors show similar importance in shaping the community structure. An interesting result of this study is the long term stability of both spatial and seasonal components of the community structure which remained almost identical after 20 years, as shown by the comparison of ordination plots obtained from 1974 and 1994 sampling series. Therefore this study provides empirical evidence of a frequently hypothesised, albeit never demonstrated feature of the cave ecosystem.
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