Page 22 - Наукові записки ДПМ. Т 35/2019

НАУКОВІ ЗАПИСКИ ДЕРЖАВНОГО ПРИРОДОЗНАВЧОГО МУЗЕЮ
Випуск 35 Львів, 2019 С. 21-36

UDC 595.7:57.082.132:069.5(477)

Ocheretna K.

CRYPTOPHAGIDAE (COLEOPTERA) IN THE COLLECTIONS OF UKRAINE:
SPECIES, SPECIMENS, AND COLLECTORS

The collections of Cryptophagidae beetles stored in the natural museums of Ukraine were
studied: three academic and two university collections – State Museum of Natural History,
National Museum of Natural History and I.I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of the National
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Zoological Museum of T. Shevchenko Kyiv National
University and Museum of Natural History of V. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and also
author’s work collection. The volumes and the state of their preservation have been analyzed.
The representation of different species in collections, as a whole, and in relation to the
Carpathian fauna is evaluated. In general, museum collections contain 1346 samples of
Cryptophagids, in each of which – about 210-340 individuals, all of them are stored in separate
boxes and punctured by entomologic needles. The author's collection includes 1657 specimens
of 57 species, which are mostly stored on cotton mattresses. All six collections include 122
species of 16 genera, containing from 21 to 85 species of this family. Some samples in
collections have been lost for various reasons, in 10 cases there are only needles with labels
without the samples themselves, therefore, some species (eg Cryptophagus nitidulus, C.
hexagonalis) are represented in collections conditionally, only in labels. At the revision of
materials attention is paid to taxonomic changes, through which in the publications and in the
actual material different species or generic synonymic names were used. The author also took
into account the uniqueness of each of the collections, which was determined by several
important parameters, including the number of samples that are presented exclusively in some
of the museum of species and genera of the family, the number of samples and type specimens
in collection. For most of these parameters the leader is the collection of Zoological Museum
of T. Shevchenko Kyiv National University. All data is included in the author's database, which
contains summaries of annotations containing collections of samples, names of regions and
localities of collection, dates, collectors, or owners of the collection, and also notes with
clarifications of places or details of reidentifications.
Key words: Cryptophagidae, collections, natural museums, species diversity.

Collection specimens for taxonomy and checking the current distribution of species are
extremely valuable, so their analysis should be one of the important components of the study
of the fauna of Coleoptera and, in particular, Cryptophagidae. Such studies are common
practice among Western and Ukrainian scientists. In particular, the work of S. Ribeiro-Costa
with co-authors devoted to the study of collection specimens of beetles of zoological
department of the Federal University of Paraná State of Brazil [21] should be noted, which
includes the analysis of typical specimens of collection of the famous entomologist
J. S. Moure [5]. Also, many scientific papers, including those relating directly to
Cryptophagids, are based on a comparative analysis of own and museum collections
[6, 19] or exclusively the museum collections [2, 3, 16].
Cryptophagidae is a unique object for monitoring, studying the variability and dynamics
of biota, since they are diverse in species and generic composition and environmental
preferences, many of them close the trophic chains and available in different types of
communities [9]. We can study the diversity of fauna only through the accumulation of large