Contribution to the knowledge of South Italian Gelechiidae (Lepidoptera: Gelechioidea)

We provide data concerning 39 species of Gelechiidae collected in Calabria and Basilicata regions, Italy. Twenty-three species are new for the studied area and six new for southern Italy. Most interesting are the records of Cosmardia moritzella (Treitschke, 1835), recorded only in the Alps so far, Aroga pascuicola (Staudinger, 1871), Oxypteryx immaculatella (Douglas, 1850), and Helcystogramma lamprostoma (Zeller, 1847), new for the Italian mainland, and Aproaerema cinctelloides (Nel & Varenne, 2012), new for the Italian fauna.


Introduction
The family of Gelechiidae consists of about 500 genera and more than 4600 species worldwide (Hodges, 1998), but this number is constantly increasing with the progress of taxonomic research.In Europe, 865 species are recorded (Huemer & Karsholt, 2020), 359 of which were found in Italy (Huemer & Karsholt, 1995).However, the Italian fauna needs to be updated in the light of several new species which recently were described (e.g.Huemer & Karsholt, 2018;Timossi & Huemer, 2021, 2022;Huemer, 2022).Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the European diversity for this family is largely underestimated (Huemer et al. 2020).
In this paper we provide new records for 39 species collected in the southernmost regions of peninsular Italy, some of which significantly enlarging their known distribution range.

Material and Methods
The study is based on 79 specimens belonging to 39 species of Gelechiidae recorded in Calabria and Basilicata.In Calabria, surveys were carried out using UV LED light traps (Infusino et al. 2017), whilst in Basilicata several light sources and collecting methods were applied.Identification was performed using available iconography (Parenti, 2000;Huemer & Karsholt, 1999, 2010), including World Wide Web sites (mothdissection.co.uk; lepi-forum.org), and DNA barcoding according to the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding protocol (https://ccdb.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Instructions_Microplate-web.pdf).The BOLD Identification Engine was used to confirm morphological identifications on a molecular basis, to generate a Neighbor-joining tree for successfully barcoded specimens, and to evaluate similarity of sequences with those publicly available in BOLD.Intraspecific pairwise distance was evaluated for Calabrian specimens using the distance summary tool available among sequence analysis options available in BOLD Systems (http://www.boldsystems.org/).Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) were also reported for the most interesting taxa.The BIN is the result of an online framework that clusters barcode sequences algorithmically.Since clusters show high concordance with species, this system can be used to verify species identifications as well as document diversity when taxonomic information is lacking (http://www.boldsystems.org/).Genitalia dissection was performed using the "unrolling technique" as described by Pitkin (1986).
For each species we provided region, province, municipality, and collecting site, altitude above the sea level, geographical coordinates of collecting sites, date of collection, number of collected specimens, name/s of collector/s, microscope slide number (CREA-xxxx) and BOLD sample ID number (when applicable), hostplants known from literature, species distribution, and importance of the record.Nomenclature and order of species followed Huemer & Karsholt (2020).
Specimens from the following collections were examined: CREA-FL collection of the Research Centre for Forestry and Wood (Rende, Italy); ZSM (SNSB) Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (Munich, Germany); TLMF Tiroler Landesmuseen Ferdinandeum (Innsbruck, Austria).than 1% from other European samples, Mirificarma cytisella and M. eburnella are more strongly divergent (Table 1).The barcode sequence of the Calabrian M. cytisella belongs to a supposedly endemic Barcode Index Number (BIN), which is even different from an additional BIN including Piedmont region samples (Figure 23).It is a genetically variable species, separated into five BINs, many of them without clear geographic separation.In fact, two BINs appear to be sympatric in Bavaria, two in Austria and two in Italy (Figure 23).M. eburnella shows two BINs in Calabria, one shared with Austrian, Greek and Montenegrian specimens, the other one appears to be endemic (Figure 24).Therefore, for Mirificarma species, this mitochondrial variation seems to be linked to an intraspecific genetic diversity.

Discussion and conclusions
Although we listed a relatively low number of species compared to those known in Italy, the number of faunistic novelties is very high, as expected due to the scarce investigation of Microlepidoptera in South Italian regions.In detail, Aproaerema cinctelloides is new for the Italian fauna, Aroga pascuicola, Helcystogramma lamprostoma and Oxypteryx immaculatella are new for continental Italy, Cosmardia moritzella is recorded for the first time in Italy outside the Alps, six species are new for the fauna of southern Italy (Mirificarma maculatella, Scrobipalpa acuminatella, Caryocolum tischeriella, C. herwigvanstaai, C. leucomelanella, Teleiodes italica, Carpatolechia decorella), and 24 species are new for the regional fauna lists of Calabria and Basilicata.
Aproaerema cinctelloides was described from Corsica (Nel & Varenne, 2012), where it was separated from the similar A. cinctella on morphological bases.It has initially been supposed to be an endemic of Corsica, but subsequently was reported in other European countries (Segerer & Huemer, 2020).Although it has not been reported from Italy so far, it is likely that its presence in Italy was underestimated.As noticed by Segerer & Huemer (2020), specimens collected at hot, dry locations should be thoroughly checked for their identity.In fact, the South Italian record is consistent with this expectation.
In Italy, only two documented reports are available for Cosmardia moritzella from central-eastern Alps (South Tyrol, Trentino-Alto Adige), at an altitude of 1250 m (Huemer & Hebert, 2016;Huemer et al. 2020).Although it is common in the Sila mountains, it seems to be absent from northern and central Apennines.We compared the male genitalia of a specimen from the Sila with the available iconography (Huemer & Karsholt, 2010, plate 14, figure 140) and with those of a specimen from northern Italy (unpublished data; Veneto, Belluno, Monte Vette, Rifugio Dal Piaz 1998 m, 10-VII-2017) which was the southernmost finding known in Italy.There are no morphological differences in habitus and  (Karsholt & Nieukerken, 2013).In Italy it is only known from one Sardinian locality, Monte Iscudu (Huemer et al. 2020).This is the first record from Italian mainland.We collected one specimen in May, supporting the bivoltinism supposed in Huemer & Karsholt (1999).
Oxypteryx immaculatella is documented from Central-West Europe and Greece and was recorded only recently for Italy in Sardinia, Monte Albo (Huemer et al. 2020).This is the first record from Italian mainland.The specimen was collected in a dry habitat with sparse Mediterranean shrubs, where congeneric species of the supposed host plant Hypericum pulchrum are present.
The European distribution of Helcystogramma lamprostoma is limited to Mediterranean countries.In Italy it has been reported only from Sicily and Sardinia, the Calabrian finding constituting the easternmost record of continental Europe.The Mediterranean character of the species is confirmed also by the occurrence of the species near to the coastal line.
DNA barcoding analysis showed the presence of endemic BINs for some species, deserving further taxonomic studies.

Figure 24 .
Figure 24.Neighbor-joining tree generated by the identification engine of BOLD for the successfully barcoded Calabrian specimens of Mirificarma eburnella (BOLD ID: LEP-SS-01200, LEP-SS-01202, LEP-SS-01199, LEP-SS-01198) and some supposedly conspecific specimens from other parts of Europe.BINs (BOLD:xxx) were also reported with the same color of tree branches.

Table 1 .
Best match of barcode sequences obtained for Calabrian species with those published and deposited in BOLD.The most different Calabrian sequence for each species was selected.