Bioacoustics of Odontura stenoxypha

Remarks . Fieber (1853) described O. stenoxypha only from a female specimen; the following is the original description (translated from German): “Greenish. Vertex finely pointed, with 5 bright lines, sulcate with 2 swellings. Pronotum short, nearly angular. Lateral lobes trapezoidal, posteriorly enlarged, angles continuous with the posterior arched margin, margins with one brown line. Abdomen with 3 lines of black dots. ♀ . Supragenital plate triangular. Subgenital plate transversally triangular. Ovipositor sabre-like. Tip narrow, with big brown spines, and with spines and teeth on its sides”. However, it ought to be pointed out that this description is common to all the species of the genus Odontura , and, in the opinion of the present authors, only fresh material can resolve this issue, essentially, to allow the taxon to be carefully examined and, if deemed necessary, re-described. A male and a female Odontura stenoxypha are illustrated, respectively, in Figures 6a and 6b ; when alive, they display particular colours, but tend to lose the relative splendour of their natural coloration once the specimens are mounted and dried. The female, in particular, may or may not have longitudinal lines along the pronotum, and only brown dots on abdominal tergite, as indicated by Fieber (1853) . The cerci of Odontura stenoxypha are apically incurved, quite abruptly ( Figure 1f ). Tegmina of the female are well overlapped. Fieber (1853) indicated “ Sicily ” as type locality. Because Fischer (1853) reported Barbitistes pyrenaea from Sardinia , stating “Prof. Zeller ♂ et ♀ mensibus Aprili et Majo circa Syracusas reperit et mecum at examinandum communicavit”, Messina (1981) assumed that the locality from which the female described by Fieber was collected had in fact been the south-eastern area of Sicily , and went on to describe yet another species living in the northern part of the island and the Egadi Is., namely, Odontura arcuata . Messina (1981) described this new species on the basis of the hetero-chromosomes, in particular, the different position of the centromere in the X chromosome in O. arcuata and O. stenoxypha (see Alicata et al . 1974 ) and, furthermore, suggested that no morphological differences effectively existed between the two taxa. However, Messina (1981) only limited himself to report some drawings of cerci and subgenital plates of males, showing the high variability of the taxon. In view of the fact that Harz (1969) indicated the Naturhistorisches Museum of Vienna as depository of the type, Llorente & Pinedo (1990) , in an attempt to verify such claim, were informed that two females were preserved in the Vienna Museum collections, one of which carried a label ‘Ficuzza Sicil., Krüger’ and presumed that this specimen may well be the holotype of the species (the said specimen was also examined by one of the authors [BM]). Incidentally, Ficuzza (Palermo) is also among the localities reported by Messina (1981) for O. arcuata . Meanwhile, Warchalowska-Sliva et al . (2011) examined some specimens collected in Sicily , identifying them as O. stenoxypha (from Eraclea Minoa, southern Sicily ) and O. arcuata (from Segesta, northern Sicily , and Selinunte, south-western Sicily ). It is presumed by the present authors that the specimens were identified on the basis of the collecting localities, because the key published by Llorente & Pinedo (1990) does not cite O. arcuata . Subsequently, some of the original authors revisited their work on these specimens and proposed that they belong to two subspecies, namely Odontura stenoxypha stenoxypha and Odontura stenoxypha arcuata ( Grzywacz et al . 2013 ) . In reality, Grzywacz et al . (2013) did not find any genetic divergence among the specimens examined; furthermore, they confirmed the same bioacoustics pattern among the two groups and concluded: “Despite differences in the fundamental number and in the X chromosomes between O. s. stenoxypha and O. s. arcuata , it should be noted that we found similar-sized chromosomal differences within other Odontura species ”. Clearly, there are no evident differences between the two taxa, nor is there an apparent and defined distribution between the two taxa; thus, it is being proposed that O. arcuata Messina, 1981 is considered a junior synonym of O. stenoxypha ( Fieber, 1853 ) .