Description of two new species and phylogenetic reassessment of Perelleschus OBrien & Wibmer, 1986 (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), with a complete taxonomic concept history of Perelleschus sec. Franz & Cardona-Duque, 2013

The weevil genus Perelleschus OBrien & Wibmer, 1986, is revised; including the description of P. salpinflexus Cardona-Duque & Franz sp. nov. sec. Franz & Cardona-Duque (2013) from Colombia and P. spinothylax Cardona-Duque & Franz sp. nov. sec. Franz & Cardona-Duque (2013) from Colombia and Venezuela. This study furthermore demonstrates the feasibility and utility of the taxonomic concept approach as laid out in Franz & Peet (2009). In particular, we establish and consistently practice a convention where (1) the taxonomic name sec. author annotation is used in all instances where a specific meaning of a name is intended; (2) just the taxonomic name is used to refer to the cumulative nomenclatural and taxonomic legacy associated with that name; and (3) the term [non-focal] is added to a taxonomic name to signal that specifying or redefining its meaning is outside of the scope of this study. We reproduce six classifications and 54 constituent taxonomic concepts that represent a complete taxonomic history of the entities classified in Perelleschus sec. Franz & Cardona-Duque (2013). We provide tabular summaries in which (1) each of the 54 concepts is uniquely identified, (2) the six concept groups are arranged via parent/child relationships into their respective classifications, (3) 76 articulations are asserted to semantically integrate concepts across classifications, and (4) the textual circumscription of each concept is reproduced. These data reveal that the taxonomic history of Perelleschus sec. Franz & Cardona-Duque (2013) has been rather stable at the species level and more complicated at higher levels, where 49 out of 54 articulations are not unambiguously congruent and 37 articulations use the intensional/ostensive annotation. This cumulative information presents a novel use case suitable for representation and reasoning about taxonomic classifications and classification provenance in computational logic. We discuss the merits of this approach and provide recommendations for a wider implementation.