A multilocus assessment reveals two new synonymies for East Asian Cyclommatus stag beetles (Coleoptera, Lucanidae)

Cyclommatus scutellaris Möllenkamp, 1912, Cyclommatus elsae Kriesche, 1921 and Cyclommatus tamdaoensis Fujita, 2010 are East Asian stag beetle species with long-debated taxonomic relationships due to high intraspecific morphological variability. In this study, we applied multilocus phylogenetic analyses to reassess their relationships. Two mitochondrial genes (16S rDNA, COI) and two nuclear genes (28S rDNA, Wingless) were used to reconstruct the phylogeny through the Bayesian inference (BI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) methods. Both topologies supported two clades: the clade C. scutellaris was sister to the clade (C. elsae + C. tamdaoensis) with the subclade C. tamdaoensis embedded in the subclade C. elsae. The Kimura 2-parameter (K2P) genetic distance analysis yielded a low mean value (≤0.035) among the three taxa, which was well below the minimum mean value between other Cyclommatus species (≥0.122). We also compared the accuracy and efficiency of two approaches, GMYC and ABGD, in delimitating the three lineages. The result shows that ABGD is a better approach than GMYC. Our molecular data recognizes the three species as different populations of a single species, ranging from Taiwan Island to the continent. Therefore, we propose two new junior synonyms for C. scutellaris: C. tamdaoensis, syn. nov. and C. elsaesyn. nov.