A Cytogenetic Study of Vadonia Unipunctata (coleoptera: Cerambycidae) and Its Distribution in Turkey

Cytogenetic studies may be helpful in classifying a taxon when external taxonomic traits are not adequate to do so unambiguously. Comparative karyology can have advantages in taxonomic studies of animals because chromosomal characters are essentially morphological characters (Gokhman & Kuznetsova 2006). Cytogenetic studies on the Cerambycidae, in particular, have been realized poorly worldwide until now (Ehara 1956; Teppner 1966, 1968; Kudoh et al. 1972; Smith & Virkki 1978; Vidal 1984; Vaio et al. 1985; Lachowska et al. 1996; Holecova et al. 2002; Rozek et al. 2004; Dutrillaux et al. 2007). The diploid number of chromosomes in long-horned beetle species range between 10 and 36. The sexchromosome system of long-horned beetles is the parachute type (Xy p ). The most frequent diploid chromosome number in the Cerambycidae is 2n = 20 (18AA + Xy p ) (Smith & Virkki 1978). Until now no cytogenetic investigations had been conducted on the genus Vadonia Mulsant 1863 (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Lepturinae: Lepturini) including the species, Vadonia unipunctata (Fabricius 1787). In this species, we determined the diploid number of chromosomes in the mitotic metaphase to be 2n = 20. The members of Vadonia closely resemble each other in their external morphology; and identification of these species on the basis of external morphology, therefore, is either very difficult or impossible. Generally the identification of Vadonia species is necessarily based solely on characteristics of the male genitalia. Therefore the discovery of new taxonomic characters of Vadonia species by means of cytogenetic investigations may prove to be useful for both the identification of species and also the proper classification of the genus.