Summary: | The Collembolan genus <i>Lepidocyrtus</i> is subdivided into up to eight subgenera, of which only <i>Lepidocyrtus</i> s.str. (Bourlet, 1839) and <i>Lanocyrtus</i> (Yoshii & Suhardjono, 1989) are represented by European species. The discovery of unique characters in the European species <i>Lepidocyrtus tomosvaryi</i> (rounded dental tubercle) and <i>L. peisonis</i> (lateral tuft of long filiform chaetae in abdomen III) has only described so far for species of the subgenera <i>Setogaster</i> (Salmon, 1951) and <i>Cinctocyrtus</i> (Yoshii & Suhardjono, 1989) and has raised the need to perform a molecular analysis by involving other representative species of the genus. For this study, phylogenetic analysis of 15 <i>Lepidocyrtus</i> species occurring in the Carpathian Basin were carried out. The analyses, which was based on both concatenated datasets of COII and EF1-α sequences and individual gene sequences, clearly placed <i>L. tomosvaryi</i> within the subgenus <i>Lanocyrtus</i> and <i>L. peisonis</i> within <i>Lepidocyrtus</i> s.srt. European species groups defined on the basis of morphological characters were only partly confirmed by the concatenated and COII analyses because of the splitting of the <i>pallidus–serbicus</i>-group, whereas EF1- α sequences weakly supported this group.
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