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Abstract
Aciagrion Selys, 1891 is one of the taxonomically difficult and poorly known genera of Oriental damselflies. Aciargion hisopa race krishna Fraser, Citation1921 was described from Mahabaleshwar, Maharashtra, India. However, later Fraser (Citation1933) doubted the taxonomic necessity of this taxon. His notion of Aciagrion hisopa (Selys, 1876) was erroneous, as evidenced by syntypes of this species in Selys’ collection, so the ssp. krishna is not conspecific with A. hisopa. Topotypic specimens of ssp. krishna from the Western Ghats were compared to specimens of Aciagrion approximans (Selys, 1876) from the Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, which are topotypical because of the recent designation of the neotype of this species in Selys’ collection. These two series were found to be very close to each other but differing at the level of subspecies, so we propose a new subspecies status and combination, Aciagrion approximans krishna Fraser, Citation1921. The range and geographical variation of A. approximans beyond India is clarified.
http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:85B16FB2-4ED5-4DA7-9649-EAB791D51494
Acknowledgements
We thank Tarun Karmakar, Vivek Sarkar and Rishiddh Jhaveri for assistance with fieldwork and specimen collection. All the topotypes and other specimens described in this paper are deposited in the Research Collections Facility at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. We are grateful to Benjamin Price and Jérôme Constant for kindly providing us photos of A. approximans krishna collected by Fraser (Kimmins, Citation1966) and the syntypes of A. hisopa respectively. We would also like to thank Anuradha Joglekar for creating the distribution map. This project was funded by a Ramanujan Fellowship (Department of Science and Technology, Government of India) and an NCBS research grant to KK. The work by the second author was supported by the budget project number 0324-2015-0004. New Indian material mentioned in this work was collected under research and voucher specimen collection permits issued by the state forest departments in the states of Kerala (permit number WL 10-3781/2012 dated 18 December 2012, and GO (RT) number 376/2012/F&WLD dated 26 July 2012) and Meghalaya (permit number FWC/G/173/Pt-II/474-83 dated 27 May 2014), for which we sincerely thank the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest in these states.
ORCiD
Oleg E. Kosterin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5955-4057