Post by Adam Cotton on Aug 18, 2011 11:30:23 GMT -8
Type locality is River Khreptovyij, alt. 250m, Central Sakhalin, Far Eastern Russia.
It is certainly isolated from the nearest population ssp. gulschenkoi Iwamoto 1997, which has a peculiar phenotype. It seems nikolaii is more closely related to ochotskensis Bryk & Eisner, 1931 and corybas Fischer de Waldheim, 1823. The original description (Asahi, Kohara, Kanda & Kawata, 1999. Butts Sakhalin Nature, pp 282-291) gives diagnostic characters to differentiate nikolaii from the other ssp. It is up to the beholder to decide whether they think the taxon is significantly different or not (I have no opinion on the validity, as I have not studied this subspecies yet.) ;-)
Adam.
It is certainly isolated from the nearest population ssp. gulschenkoi Iwamoto 1997, which has a peculiar phenotype. It seems nikolaii is more closely related to ochotskensis Bryk & Eisner, 1931 and corybas Fischer de Waldheim, 1823. The original description (Asahi, Kohara, Kanda & Kawata, 1999. Butts Sakhalin Nature, pp 282-291) gives diagnostic characters to differentiate nikolaii from the other ssp. It is up to the beholder to decide whether they think the taxon is significantly different or not (I have no opinion on the validity, as I have not studied this subspecies yet.) ;-)
Adam.