Colaspis


Colaspis is a genus of leaf beetles in the subfamily Eumolpinae. It is one of the largest genera in the subfamily, containing over 200 species, and it is known from both North and South America. A number of species from this genus are considered to be pests, such as the grape colaspis. Some species are known from the fossil record from the Eocene of Colorado in the United States.

Taxonomy

In some publications for the Neotropical realm, Colaspis is also known as Maecolaspis. This alternative name was created by the Czech entomologist Jan Bechyné in 1950, due to an error relating to the type species of Colaspis: Bechyné incorrectly considered Colaspis testacea to be the type species of Colaspis, rather than Chrysomela flavicornis. As a result, Metaxyonycha, which shared the same type species, was synonymised with Colaspis. The species of Colaspis in the Junk-Schenkling catalog were then placed under Bechyné's new name, "Maecolaspis", with Chrysomela flavicornis as the type species. These errors were corrected by W. J. Brown in 1961, who synonymized Maecolaspis with Colaspis. Despite this, Maecolaspis continued to be used as valid by some authors, and in addition Doris Holmes Blake did not mention Bechyné's use of the genus in her papers on Colaspis. These factors have resulted in some confusion regarding Colaspis itself, since this meant Colaspis could either mean Bechyné's "Maecolaspis" or Metaxyonycha depending on the system being followed.
A number of species originally placed in Colaspis have been split off into several smaller genera, such as Allocolaspis, Callicolaspis, Percolaspis, Nodocolaspis and Zenocolaspis. The genus requires further subdivision.

Species

These extant species belong to the genus Colaspis :
These four extinct species belong to the genus Colaspis:
Synonyms:
Data sources: i = ITIS, c = Catalogue of Life, g = GBIF, b = Bugguide.net