Identification of Chironomus (Chironomus) melanescens Keyl, 1962 in North America

Abstract

Chironomus melanescens was originally described by Keyl (1962) on the basis of the morphology of polytene chromosome arms A, E, and F in populations from Germany. Keyl ascribed the name to Strenzke, but although Strenzke collected and reared the specimens, he died before he was able to describe them. Keyl also had used the name in a 1961 paper but there was no information that could be considered a species description (i.e. it was a nomen nudum). The type localities in Keyl (1962) are given as Duemer Lake and a pool south of Clauthal-Zellerfeld. Wülker et al. (1981) quoted a personal communication from Keyl in which he nominated the type specimen as slide S1149 B2 (misread as S1149 82), and giving the locality as Harz, Acker, which is a loose reference to Clauthal-Zellerfield. The latter paper gave a more full description of the chromosomes as well as some information about the adult male and the larva of material from Germany and Switzerland, although specifically aimed at distinguishing C. melanescens from the closely related C. holomelas Keyl, 1962 and C. saxatilis Wülker et al., 1981. Kiknadze et al. (1991) illustrated the larva and redescribed the cytology from Russian populations.