Fauna Europaea: Coleoptera 2 (excl. series Elateriformia, Scarabaeiformia, Staphyliniformia and superfamily Curculionoidea).

Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level (up to the Urals, excluding the Caucasus region), and some additional information. The Fauna Europaea project covers about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. This represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many users in science, government, industry, nature conservation and education. Coleoptera represent a huge assemblage of holometabolous insects, including as a whole more than 200 recognized families and some 400,000 described species worldwide. Basic information is summarized on their biology, ecology, economic relevance, and estimated number of undescribed species worldwide. Little less than 30,000 species are listed from Europe. The Coleoptera 2 section of the Fauna Europaea database (Archostemata, Myxophaga, Adephaga and Polyphaga excl. the series Elateriformia, Scarabaeiformia, Staphyliniformia and the superfamily Curculionoidea) encompasses 80 families (according to the previously accepted family-level systematic framework) and approximately 13,000 species. Tabulations included a complete list of the families dealt with, the number of species in each, the names of all involved specialists, and, when possible, an estimate of the gaps in terms of total number of species at an European level. A list of some recent useful references is appended. Most families included in the Coleoptera 2 Section have been updated in the most recent release of the Fauna Europaea index, or are ready to be updated as soon as the FaEu data management environment completes its migration from Zoological Museum Amsterdam to Berlin Museum für Naturkunde.

Nepomorpha, Gerromorpha and Leptopodomorpha (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) of the Tuscan Archipelago (Italy).

This paper provides the first checklists for Nepomorpha (12 spp.), Gerromorpha (10 spp.) and Leptopodomopha (5 spp.) of the Tuscan Archipelago; summarizing and updating the knowledge for this area. The presence of the family Micronec- tidae is recorded for the first time in the Archipelago, as well as six species: Nepomorpha - Micronecta scholtzi (Fieber, 1860), Sigara selecta (Fieber, 1848), S. stagnalis (Leach, 1817), S. lateralis (Leach, 1817); Gerromorpha - Gerris asper (Fieber, 1860); Leptopodomorpha - Saldula palustris (Douglas, 1874); increasing the numbers of aquatic Heteroptera sensu lato from 21 to 27 species. The three infraorders are present in only four of the seven major islands of the Tuscan Archipelago (Capraia, Elba, Montecristo and Giglio). The Isle of Elba has been scarcely investigated until now: ten species are newly recorded for this island (doubling the number to 20 spp.), whilst another species has been first recorded for Giglio Island. The most remarkable finding is Gerris asper (Fieber, 1860) on Elba, a species inhabiting marshy areas that is very rare to Italy. Notonecta glauca Linnaeus, 1758 is excluded from the fauna of the Tuscan Archipelago.

Cercyon hungaricus, a new junior subjective synonym of C. bononiensis (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae).

Cercyon bononiensis Chiesa, 1964 was described from two specimens collected in northern Italy in 1924-1925. For some time, these specimens were identified as C. inquinatus Wollaston, 1854. Only 40 years later, having examined the type of the latter species, Chiesa (1964) realized that the two specimens belonged to an undescribed species that he then described as Cercyon bononiensis. Based on the chagrined elytra mentioned in the original description, C. bononiensis has been placed in the Cercyon tristis group by subsequent authors. Recently, we examined a small number of Cercyon specimens from northern Italy and surprisingly found two specimens of C. hungaricus Endrödy-Younga, 1967, an easily recognizable member of the C. tristis group which was previously considered a Pannonian endemic by Fikácek et al. (2009) but was recently also found in northern Germany (Bäse 2010). The presence of this unusual species led us to question whether C. hungaricus might be conspecific with C. bononiensis. This was subsequently confirmed by the study of the types of both species. Here, we provide a summary of our studies and synonymize C. hungaricus with C. bononiensis. Examined specimens are deposited in the following collections: Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Hungary (HNHM), Museo Civico di Storia Naturale Milano, Italy (MSNM), collection of S. Rocchi at the Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università di Firenze, Sezione di Zoologia "La Specola" (CRO).