Luciola Laporte 1833
Creators: name: Mori, Emiliano
name: Viviano, Andrea
name: Baratti, Mariella
name: Serafini, Elisa
name: Gabbrielli, Bianca
name: Picchi, Malayka Samantha
name: Giannetti, Daniele
name: Mascalchi, Cristina
name: Ancillotto, Leonardo
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Lampyridae
Luciola

description: Results
We successfully amplified 38 sequences of L. pedemontana, which corresponded to 20 haplotypes.In the phylogenetic tree (Fig. 3) we found strong support for the existence of L. pedemontana as a well-supported clade, divergent from L. italica (mean genetic distance: 4.0%) and other firefly species (N = 40 sequences, N = 226 polymorphic sites, N = 97 parsimony informative sites, π = 0.04, haplotype diversity: 0.74). Conversely, this clade was weakly divergent from L. lusitanica (p: 2-3%). The ML and BI (shown) trees presented similar topologies, albeit different support values presented at each node (Fig. 2). In particular, the node at the basis of L. italica and L. lusitanica+pedemontana Is highly supported by BI (=0.86) but weakly by ML analysis (100). Suggesting a not reliable separation. However, the support levels at the node sustaining the pedemontana group are robust for both inferences (0.92/95).
The haplotypes were analysed by the species delimitation criteria: results obtained by ABGD suggested 3 MOTUs, confirming the presence of a ‘barcode gap’ (Fig. S 1 in Supplementary Material). The three species are L. pedemontana + L. lusitanica, L. italica and L. unmunsana + L. papariensis. These two last species, described as different taxa, show a low interspecific genetic distance (2%) and have been proposed as synonyms (cf. Jusoh et al. 2021). The PTP method identified five MOTUs within the Luciola genus, with the described species L. italica, L. lusitanica, L. unmunsana + L. papariensis and two taxa inside of L. pedemontana. (Fig. S1, Supplementary Material). The first taxonomic group inside pedemontana (1+ 3 in the Fig. 3) identified by PTP analyses for L. pedemontana is not highly supported in the phylogenetic tree (0.79/79) and comprises the subgroup 1 (Eastern) with specimens from Parma, Perugia, Siena, Grosseto, and Florence provinces and the subgroup from Padule di Bientina (Group 3, geographically and phylogenetically close to the Eastern group) one of the major wetlands in Tuscany located in the Pisa province; the Group 2 included Pisa, Massa Carrara, Siena, Grosseto and Florence provinces (Western), (Fig. 3). The same group separation was also observed in the TCS network, where le distances among the three groups exceed the 90% of connection limit and they appeared as separated networks (Fig. 4). The PTP method more sensible to small dataset and useful for taxonomic investigation is more coherent with the groups identified by phylogenetic analyses although not highly supported.
The genetic distances of the COI sequence between species ranged from 3.8% in average (L. italica and L. pedemontana) to 21% between the two genera Luciola and Lampyris species (Table 2). The three L. pedemontana groups showed a genetic distance among them of around 2.8% that appears under the threshold found for intraspecific distances in Lampyridae. Intraspecific genetic distances ranged from 0.3% in Group 1to 1.1% for Group 2 (Table 2).
description: Published as part of Mori, Emiliano, Viviano, Andrea, Baratti, Mariella, Serafini, Elisa, Gabbrielli, Bianca, Picchi, Malayka Samantha, Giannetti, Daniele, Mascalchi, Cristina & Ancillotto, Leonardo, 2025, A light in the dark: DNA barcoding provides new data about the taxonomy of the Italian Luciola (Coleoptera, Lampyridae) fireflies, pp. 525-536 in Zootaxa 5609 (4) on pages 529-530, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5609.4.4, http://zenodo.org/record/15215417