Anthonomus Germar 1817

Genus Anthonomus Germar, 1817

The samples of the genus Anthonomus form a strongly supported monophyletic group in both our analyses

(Fig. 1, Supp. 1). The Swiss populations of the speciespair Anthonomus rubi (Herbst, 1795) / brunnipennis Curtis, 1840 were investigated. There is some ambiguity about the status of A. brunnipennis in the Alps. The species shows a supposedly boreoalpine distribution (Germann, 2010b) and lives on Dryas octopetala, a boreoalpine cushion plant, and in northern Europe it lives also on Filipendula ulmaria L., Potentilla palustris L. and P. erecta L. Anthonomus rubi on the other side is a widespread species living on different Rosaceae, but also Cistaceae. Both species are very difficult to separate based on morphological traits, which overlap largely. The finds of brunnipennis from Switzerland were preliminarily termed as somewhat doubtful and a molecular re-investigation was suggested (Germann, 2010b, 2011a).

We here included a heterogeneous set of samples collected from the northern Alps, from Grisons and Ticino, and collected from either Dryas octopetala (sample 150 from Grisons; sample 144 northern Alps) being small and brownish and thus corresponding to A. brunnipennis, and from Helianthemum and Potentilla (sample 157 from nearby Italy and sample 152 from the northernAlps) being bigger and black and corresponding to typical A. rubi. However, the investigated COI sequences do not support the hypothesis that the specimens collected from Dryas octopetala are a sister-clade to the remaining supposedly „true“ Anthonomus rubi (highest intraspecific variability of 0.046; range 0.002-0.046). This might indicate that A. brunnipennis does not occur in Switzerland, however this should be corroborated with specimens of typical A. brunnipennis from northern Europe. On the other hand, an incomplete lineage sorting and/or a too short speciation time being detected by our COI barcode marker might explain our outcome (see also the discussion about the Hypera nigrirostris -group below).