Hemitrichapion wagneri wagneri, 2006

Hemitrichapion wagneri wagneri vs. H. w. gomerense

– just a colour play?

Hemitrichapion wagneri gomerense STÜBEN & BEHNE, 2010 , is without exception a red-copper metallic species on La Gomera ( type locality) and El Hierro, while the nominotypic taxon from the Iberian Peninsula appears bluish green ( type locality is Cascais, Portugal). The two subspecies living on various Lotus species cannot actually be confused with each other and are certainly not conspecific from a morphological point of view! However on Tenerife there even seems to be two species/ subspecies: H. wagneri gomerense and another coppercoloured, cryptic (sub)species, which clusters together with H. wagneri wagneri (FLACH, 2006) from Portugal ( Estremadura) and Spain ( Andalucía) in the tree. If the clear clade formation can be confirmed, there would be no objection to a (sub)species splitting, but in such cases one should not forego the molecular investigation of many more populations from the named islands in order to exclude polyphyly and/or paraphyly; otherwise - and in what we consider to be a very unlikely case - the two (sub)species would only be colour variants of the same species.