Taxonomic changes in Ichneumonoidea (Hymenoptera), and notes on certain type specimens
Author
Broad, Gavin R.
text
Zootaxa
2021
2021-03-10
4941
4
511
541
journal article
7660
10.11646/zootaxa.4941.4.3
a4583583-90dc-415f-923c-334c5dc9ce60
1175-5326
4595588
8DDC8255-7E11-4135-AF8E-F60FF1AB6827
21.
Xanthojoppa inermis
Morley 1917
(
Fig. 20
)
Current combination.
junior synonym of
Aethianoplis excavata
(Roman 1910)
new synonymy
(
Ichneumonidae
:
Ichneumoninae
); junior homonym of
Xanthojoppa inermis
Morley 1916
(now
Seyrighoplites inermis
(Morley 1916))
.
Material examined.
Xanthojoppa inermis
Morley 1917
♂
lectotype
, here designated,
NHMUK
,
South Africa
,
KwaZulu-Natal
,
Mfongosi
: ‘
Mfongosi Zulu L. W E Jones’
; ‘Xanthojoppa Cam. (Anisojoppa, Cam)
inermis, Morl.
sp. nov.
TYPE
Morley
det.
x.1916
.’; ‘
Claude Morley Collection. B.M.
1952-159.’; ‘
B.M.Type Hym.
3b.2073’; ‘
NHMUK010635181
’.
FIGURE 20.
Xanthojoppa inermis
Morley 1917
lectotype male (NHMUK010635181): (a) lateral habitus, labels inset, scale bar = 5mm; (b) dorsal habitus; (c) detail of posterior of mesosoma and anterior of metasoma, dorsal, showing curved carina around scutellum and thyridia (on second metasomal tergite) separated by about a thyridium width.
Comments.
The description of
Xanthojoppa inermis
Morley 1917
was missed by Yu & Horstmann (2006) and by
Yu
et al.
(2016)
. As
Heinrich (1968b)
noted, Claude Morley published two descriptions of
Xanthojoppa inermis
(Morley 1916; 1917), clearly referring to different species.
Xanthojoppa inermis
Morley 1916
was transferred to
Seyrighoplites
Heinrich
, but
Heinrich (1968b)
could not locate the type depository for
X.
inermis
Morley 1917
and did not interpret the name.
Morley (1917)
refers to two specimens, female and male, in his description of
X.
inermis
but only the male
syntype
can be found in NHMUK, type number 3b.2073, which Morley had labelled type (♂). The other specimen referred to by
Morley (1917)
is a female from East London (
South Africa
,
Eastern Cape
). There is also one female specimen (NHMUK010635210) from
Uganda
(Mabira Forest) labelled as a ‘gynetype’ by Morley in 1917, which is not referred to in the original description and has no type status.
Morley (1917)
refers to the female and male without designating a primary type. To stabilise the use of the name, this male is designated as
lectotype
here. This name had been placed under
Aethianoplis excavata
(Roman 1910)
in NHMUK, presumably by J.F. Perkins. The specimens are indeed conspecific with
A. excavata
and
X.
inermis
Morley 1917
is a junior synonym. The two specimens (
lectotype
♂ and ‘gynetype’
♀
) had been misidentified at some point as
Seyrighoplites inermis
, which is superficially similar, however, the very sinuous ventral end of the occipital carina, with an excavate gena, together with the complete carina around the scutellum and comparatively small thyridia (
Fig. 20c
) differentiate
Aethianoplis
Heinrich
from
Seyrighoplites
.
As there are no published host records for the genus
Aethianoplis
it is also worth recording a specimen in NHMUK (NHMUK010635211) reared in
Uganda
(Ssese Islands, Lake Victoria) from a nymphalid butterfly, labelled as
Precis sesamus
, now
Precis octavia sesamus
(Trimen)
(
Lepidoptera
:
Nymphalidae
), which is pinned alongside the host pupa (NHMUK010635212) (
Fig. 21
). The
A. excavata
specimen is labelled as having been collected as a larva, although the labels with the host remains only refer to the pupa, and the relatively long ovipositor with a short hypopygium are more characteristic of pupal parasitoids than larva-pupal in
Ichneumoninae
.