Bark and Ambrosia Beetles of the World

Bright (1981) treated P. confuses and P. bellus as subspecies, essentially ignoring Wood’s 1977 synonymy. He distinguished the two subspecies exclusively on geographical distribution and size (“majority of specimens >2.4 mm” vs. (“majority of specimens <2.4 mm”) and stated that the two were “distinct, isolated entities”. In fact, further collecting in Mexico shows that there is no gap in geographical distributions and the overlapping size ranges he cited do not allow for separation of specimens. He described P. confuses sequestus solely on the basis of geographical separation. In couplet 5 of his key to genera the subspecies P. confusus bellus and P. confusus sequestus by “occurs in the Bahamas” vs. “occurs in the Dominican Republic”. In the absence of any morphological or molecular data there is no basis for maintaining subspecies.