The Curious Case of Heterojapyx: How many species are there?

[insectilluminatigetshrekt]

So, there is a genus of very large diplurans called Heterojapyx. When I first saw pictures of them on inat I was immediately captivated by them. I thus decided to look into them more. But I did no know the rabbit hole I would eventually put myself in.

First is that the most observed and seemingly largest species, Heterojapyx novaezeelandiae, seems to have two spellings. One with double ee and another with ea. Alternate spellings are not unheard of in taxonomy, but what makes this weird is that both spellings seem to be considered as distinct, accepted species by the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera.

They have the same author and year attributed to them, so this is almost certainly the same species being referred to here. From a cursory search through google scholar, it seems sources that mention this species always go with the double ee spelling, and this is also what inaturalist has as well. So how come the interim register has the ea spelling as an accepted species?

GBIF and Catalogue of Life are not help at all, they only feature H. gallardi and no other species

The Open Tree Taxonomy does not help either. It again features only one species, but this time only H. novaezeelandiae. To add more confusion, it uses the ea spelling rather than ee spelling most sources use.

Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) doesn’t even feature Heterojapyx at all.

This finally brings us to INaturalist

This mostly matches up with the list of the interim register with two differences. One, it does not feature duplicates of H. novaezeelandiae, and it definitely goes with the ee spelling. The other, more interesting difference is that it features one additonal species not seen in the interim register, H. souliei. This species is the only other species with an inat observation.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/234712584

In the comments, the user @szucsich mentions a paper about the rediscovery of this species in China, but this paper does not seem to be available anywhere. Putting the title into google only gets me this list of abstracts. https://www.protozoology.com/publications/abstracts/Berger_2013_Abstract_Vienna.pdf

So all of this begs the question. What the hell is going on exactly with the taxonomy of Heterojapyx?

[thebeachcomber]

@insectilluminatigetshrekt

In the comments, the user @szucsich mentions a paper

it wasn’t a paper, but rather a physical poster presented at that 2013 conference

[insectilluminatigetshrekt]

Hmm, my mistake. It seems there is no version viewable online, unfortunately

[DianaStuder]

How is New Zealand correctly spelt in a scientific name ? I suspect the double E and ea is a typo from English ?

[notiophilus]

Hello,

This is why we should cite species names at least with author and year, and in taxonomic treatments also with a page number. Theoretically Verhoeff could have described two species with very similar names in the same year or the same paper.

This is a screenshot from the “Cooperative Catalog of Palearctic Coleoptera Curculionoidea). The number behind the year is the page number.

To learn about the correct spelling, it would be necessary to look at the original description of the species, and to check the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature: https://www.iczn.org/the-code/the-code-online/ (important are article 32 and 33).

In case you have difficulties to find the paper of the original description: Try to find a taxonomical checklist or any other taxonomic treatment (genus revision or something like that). Those papers give the full citation for each name. Then, you can find that paper on biodiversity heritage library.

I really don’t understand that iNaturalist is storing names even without author and year, that would be the absolute minimum to be certain about the identity of names! Page number or even full citation would be even better. Large databases (I don’t know exactly about the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera) often have more errors than smaller taxonomic checklists, as they tend to aggregate from various sources.

Best,

Jakob

[marco_zaccaria]

@insectilluminatigetshrekt

Heterojapyx novaezeelandiae

If of interest, link to the paper @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12640927 (taken from https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Heterojapyx_novaezeelandiae ). I can only see one species in it:)

[vladimir_fuka]

I assume the author can choose their spelling. Zeelandia is of course the Latin name of Zeeland.

[insectilluminatigetshrekt]

Really the main question of my op, which I perhaps should have said better, is why is there such a discrepancy between different databases in what constitutes Heterojapyx

[marco_zaccaria]

Oh I mean, this is more likely to be on my reading comprehension than on you:p

Just to wrap up on novaezeelandiae / novaezealandiae - Verhoeff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Wilhelm_Verhoeff) wrote in German, and in German New Zealand is spelled as Neuseeland. So the double e is probably more aligned with a German/Dutch spelling, while the ea version is more aligned with an Anglicised spelling.

Interestingly using Google Ngram and then Google books one can see both spellings as early as 1906 (the second book is Record of Zoological Literature, Insecta · Volume 40, 1906), so I’m pretty confident this is due to translation:)

As for the broader question - I really don’t have an answer, but if you want to research this further happy to help!

Edit: also, on H. souliei - Koch is still an active academic, should we drop them an email?(:

[matthewvosper]

Oh dear! What have you done to my lunch break!

So if you look up th genus page on Wikipedia, interestingly it only includes the ee spelling

I haven’t been able to track down the original description, but here is Verhoeff’s own 1904 (next year) paper where he creates the genus Heterojapyx, and he spells it ee: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15065152#page/110/mode/1up

[insectilluminatigetshrekt]

The wikipedia includes yet an additional species not featured anywhere else, Heterojapyx dux. Very interesting.

[insectilluminatigetshrekt]

@marco_zaccaria

Edit: also, on H. souliei - Koch is still an active academic, should we drop them an email?(:

I think it would be helpful yes (sorry for the double post)

[marco_zaccaria]

@insectilluminatigetshrekt

Heterojapyx dux

I think the reference in Wikipedia is actually incorrect - I found the description in the 1900 volume 5 of the Annuaire du Musée Zoologique de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, by W. Salensky et R. Schmidt >>> https://archive.org/details/ezhegodnik05zool/page/320/mode/2up