Taxonomic Structure of the Subtribe Chrysochroina Cast.With Review of the Genus Chrysochroa Dej.

Taxonomic Structure of the Subtribe Chrysochroina Cast.With Review of the Genus Chrysochroa Dej. - B. Roman Hołyński

The Chrysochroina CAST. is a large subtribe inhabiting almost all tropical and subtropical areas of the Old World. The taxon comprises big or at least medium-sized, often splendidly colourful species, many of which are rather common; moreover, larvae develop in wood of living forest- or orchard-trees including those of considerable economic importance, while size and attractive appearance of adults attract the interest of not only buprestid specialists but also „general nature lovers” and even provoke mass collecting for commercial (jewellery, „souvenirs”) purposes. And none the less they have never been subject of comprehensive phylogenetic or zoogeographic study, and even the last revision (KERREMANS 1908) and catalogue (OBENBERGER 1926) have been despairingly outdated; as the result, taxonomic structure remains poorly understood, available distributional data inexact and frequently erroneous, while knowledge about bionomy and phylogenetic relationships are almost totally lacking. The present book – taxonomic, biogeographic and evolutionary revision of the subtribe at the genus-subgenus level and of its „central” genus, Chrysochroa DEJ. (sensu novo), at that of species and subspecies – is an attempt to fill some of these gaps in our knowledge. The main part is devoted to clarify the relationships between the included taxa: based on the detailed phylogenetic analyses (performed with the newly developed program, MICSEQ; the results shown on 14 trees and detailly described as well for the subtribe as a whole, as for each supraspecific taxon within Chrysochroa DEJ. and for each genus otherwise) a largely refined and emended classification (with keys, full synonymy, morphological descriptions, geographical distribution and taxonomic, nomenclatural, distributional &c. remarks is proposed on the one hand, and the ways of evolutionary (with tentative descriptive „reconstructions” of ancestors) and biogeographic (illustrated with „geocladograms” development hypothesized on the other. Altogether 64 subgenera in 16 genera of the Chrysochroina CAST., including 137 subspecies in 75 species, 20 circles and 13 subgenera of Chrysochroa DEJ. are treated, their distribution mapped , and most of them shown on 173 colour photographs . The introductory part (pp. 12-29) discusses the basic approaches, assumptions and conventions accepted in the book, while the concluding chapters (pp. 311-330) evaluate to what degree these approaches and conventions proved correct and appropriate, and what general taxonomic, biogeographic and evolutionary conclusions can be drawn from the results presented in the systematic part (some new or disputable methods, concepts and hypotheses are critically commented upon . List of quoted literature includes 386 publications.