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Occurrence Thaumetopoea pityocampa wilkinsoni hellenica mediterranea; Specimen

Circum Mediterranean area + Atlantic coast + central Europe + eastern Europe

Review of the species within the Thaumetopoea pityocampa group

The pine processionary moth, Thaumetopoea pityocampa (Denis and Schiffermüller), is an iconic insect in the Mediterranean culture because of its economic and medical importance and the unique traits of the life history, namely the winter feeding and the construction of conspicuous silk tents by the larvae. Its taxonomic status, however, is unclear because the type material is not available and there is confusion among the several species and subspecies described in the last centuries. In the present study, a metadata analysis of morphological and molecular data of the species in the T. pityocampa complex were considered for species delimitation, using more than 400 individuals from more than 120 geographic locations. A reconstruction of the origin of the material used for the first formal description has allowed to identify the type locality and to design a neotype. In addition, as Denis and Schiffermüller were referring to the work of Réaumur for details about the species, the description provided by Réaumur was reviewed. The results indicate that the barcode region of mitochondrial DNA is a reliable trait to separate species in most cases whereas morphological traits are not. Hybridization among taxa makes it difficult to delimit species in contact zones when mating barriers are not present. In other cases, such as the populations of Crete Island, the lack of gene flow with the mainland population may support species delimitation even when morphological traits are not conclusive. Thus, the new species Thaumetopoea cretensis is described here based on the evidence obtained from a previous study. Species delimitation based on both mitochondrial and nuclear markers allowed maintenance of three species of the complex (T. cretensis, T. pityocampa, and T. wilkinsoni) while more data are needed to determine the status of two recently described species: T. hellenica and T. mediterranea.

The personnel involved in the project:

Four species are considered as valid (in chronological order of their description, T. pityocampa, T. wilkinsoni, T. hellenica, and T. mediterranea), one as a subspecies (T. pityocampa orana), and 15 are synonyms of T. pityocampa. Types of all species, subspecies and synonyms were examined, either from museum collections or from publications, spanning over 120 locations in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. Whenever possible, populations close to the type locality of taxa were used for both morphological and molecular analyses.

Method step description:

1. For male and female specimens, 44 and 31 traits, respectively, showed polymorphism and were used to explore morphological differentiation. The moth samples used in the study were collected with different methods (e.g., rearing from larvae, light/pheromone trapping) following all applicable international and local permitting requirements. There was some variation in the specimen quality and suitability for a comparative analysis of several traits. For this reason, only individuals in a reasonably good preservation condition were used. Male genitalia preparation and female scale extraction from anal tuft followed the method described in Basso et al. (2017a). Geographic coordinates and name of the collection site were recorded for each specimen, to which a unique alphanumeric code was assigned indicating country, locality, and number of specimens.