New Insight into the Systematics of European Lepidocyrtus (Collembola: Entomobryidae) Using Molecular and Morphological Data

The Collembolan genus is subdivided into up to eight subgenera, of which only s.str. (Bourlet, 1839) and (Yoshii & Suhardjono, 1989) are represented by European species. The discovery of unique characters in the European species (rounded dental tubercle) and (lateral tuft of long filiform chaetae in abdomen III) has only described so far for species of the subgenera (Salmon, 1951) and (Yoshii & Suhardjono, 1989) and has raised the need to perform a molecular analysis by involving other representative species of the genus. For this study, phylogenetic analysis of 15 species occurring in the Carpathian Basin were carried out. The analyses, which was based on both concatenated datasets of COII and EF1-α sequences and individual gene sequences, clearly placed within the subgenus and within s.srt. European species groups defined on the basis of morphological characters were only partly confirmed by the concatenated and COII analyses because of the splitting of the -group, whereas EF1- α sequences weakly supported this group.