Comparative Morphology of the Endophallus (Male Internal Genitalia) in Eight Species of the Genus Lixus Fabricius, 1801 (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Lixinae): A Scanning Electron Microscope Study

Abstract

The fine structure of the endophallus in eight species of Lixus beetles [L.

The spermatheca in the genus Dendroctonus (Curculionidae: Scolytinae): morphology, nomenclature, potential characters for taxonomic use and phylogenetic signal

“…Although the spermatheca has been studied to diagnose different groups of Curculionidae, because it presents characteristics with high taxonomic value (Aslam, 1961;Sanders, 1960), the literature presents inconsistencies in its nomenclature (Tables 4-7). A few studies recognize the spermatheca as an organ integrated by different elements (Erbey et al, 2010;Sanders, 1960), and in most of them (Anderson, 1984;Brizzola dos Santos & Rosado-Neto, 2010;Lanteri & del Río, 2008;Omar, 2012;Velázquezde Castro et al, 2007), including those focused on species of Scolytinae (Pérez-Silva & Equihua-Martínez, 2016;Román-Ruíz et al, 2017;Rubio et al, 2008), particularly within Dendroctonus (Armendáriz-Toledano et al, 2014García-Román et al, 2019;Ríos-Reyes et al, 2008), the term spermatheca is used to refer only to the receptacle (Table 6). Therefore, we suggest that in the future the nomenclature proposed by De Marzo (2009) be used, which can be applied to a greater number of species and larger taxonomic scales, facilitating the comparison of this organ for taxonomic and phylogenetic purposes.…”

“…The nomenclature used to describe the general anatomy of the spermatheca was based on the study by De Marzo (2009), and the attributes used for their characterization were taken from articles corresponding to other subfamilies of Curculionidae (Anderson, 1984;Brizzola-dos Santos & Rosado-Neto, 2010;Erbey et al, 2010;Lanteri & del Río, 2008;Omar, 2012;Sanders, 1960;Velázquez-de Castro et al, 2007) and species of Scolytinae (Pérez-Silva & Equihua-Martínez, 2016;Román-Ruíz et al, 2017;Rubio et al, 2008), including those performed on Dendroctonus sp. Since, anatomically, all species of the genus studied presented the same elements of female genitalia (see results), the comparison among species was focused on the seminal receptacle, as it was the element with the greatest interspecific variation and the one that provided the greatest number of characteristics for the purposes of the study.…”