Pedesta masuriensis cuneomaculata Murayama, 1995

Nature & Insects 30(14): 33.

Labels: “ Yunnan Province (in Chinese character)/Dokanmura (= Tuguancun, in Chinese character)/ 24-V-1995 / S MURAYAMA,” “ Pedesta masuri-/ensis/cuneoma/culata/ HOLOTYPE.”

A male specimen was designated as the holotype by Murayama (1995), and the specimen was retrieved in LBM (Figs. 25–27; Dried Insect Database Reg. no. 1500022032).

Huang (2011) treated cuneomaculata as a junior subjective synonym of Thoressa masuriensis tali (Swinhoe, 1912) . We agree that cuneomaculata is a synonym of tali . The nominate subspecies masuriensis Moore, 1878 and subspecies tali are significantly different in appearance (Figs. 46–49), but Evans (1949) considered them as conspecific. However, masuriensis (Figs. 46–47, 50) and tali (Figs. 48–49, 51) are two different species, supported by distinctions in genitalia (Figs. 50–51) and the genetic divergence of COI barcode between them (12–13%, Table 1). They may be separated by the following features: 1) uncus bent with blunt tips in masuriensis (Fig. 50) versus straight with narrowed tips in tali (Fig. 51); 2) left harpe with inner one of terminal processes as small lobe in masuriensis (Fig. 50) versus produced serrate teeth in tali (Fig. 51); 3) phallus short and stout in masuriensis (Fig. 50) versus elongate and slender in tali (Fig. 51). Those masuriensis molecular samples in China (Li et al. 2019) all belong to tali .

Huang (2011) was correct in merging the Chinese taxa of Thoressa Swinhoe, 1913 and Pedesta Hemming, 1934 . His taxonomic treatment, however, was not complete because he did not include the type species of Thoressa . The genus Thoressa sensu Evans (1949) was polyphyletic and is now divided into three genera based on molecular evidences (Huang et al. 2019). Those species assigned to Thoressa by Huang (2011) indeed should be included in Pedesta . Therefore, Pedesta tali comb. nov. is the valid name for this taxon.