Author(s):

Su Jun-Yan, Wang Jia-Xu, Dong Yan-Ju, Guan Kai-Le, Yang Yu-Xia

Abstract: Insect wing morphology has been used in many studies in clarifying the relationship between the closely related taxa or populations, but less focused on the discrimination of the male and female within species. This study is conducted to determine differences in the hind wing morphology between sexes of three cantharid species, including Lycocerus orientalis (Gorham, 1889), Prothemus purpuripennis(Gorham, 1889) and Themus impressipennis (Fairmaire, 1886), using the method of geometric morphometrics. The results show that shape variations of the hind wings between male and female are different in one species from anther as shown in the principal component analysis. Discriminant function analysis shows that there are significant differences in the hind wing shape variations between sexes for each species, which demonstrates the presence of sexual dimorphism within the species of cantharid beetles.

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