Athalia marginipennis Enderlein, 1920

Koch, Frank, Pauly, Alain, Hora, Zewdu A. & Boevé, Jean-Luc, 2015, Sawflies of Ethiopia (Hymenoptera: Argidae, Tenthredinidae), Zootaxa 4021 (1), pp. 119-155 : 134-135

Athalia marginipennis Enderlein, 1920

Athalia marginipennis Enderlein, 1920: 354 . Locus typicus: D.[eutsch]- O.[st] Afrika [ Tanzania], Nyembe-Bulungwa [04°04'S 032°12'E]. Lectotype designated by Koch (2007: 92): ♀. D. O. Afrika, Nyembe-Bulungwa, 1914, Hammerstein S. (ZMPA).

Ethiopian material. Baletta Forest [ca 07°32'N 036°35'E], West of Jimma, 27.I.1946 (1 ♀), leg. K. M. Guichard ( BMNH); Tarmaber Pass, 09°50'13"N 39°44'30"E, 3160 m, 29.IX.2012, on Ajuga integrifolia , P3639C (1 ♂), leg. J.-L. Boevé ( RBINS).

Distribution. Botswana, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe.

Host plant. Brassicaceae according to Koch (2007), Opitz et al. (2012) and the examined material: reared on Brassica from Kivu: Uvira, 05.I.1960, G. Marlier (1 ♀); on wild Brassicaceae in South Africa, D. Visser (in litt.).

Remarks. Athalia marginipennis is one of the most widespread Athalia species of the Afrotropical Region. It was misidentified and wrongly synonymized by Benson (1962) with A. sjoestedti Konow, 1907 ( Koch 2006) . Although Benson (1962) indicated that he had examined the types of A. marginipennis , none of these was correspondingly labelled by him. Athalia sjoestedti is characterised by its conspicuously medially excised clypeus and is therefore ascribed to the A. vollenhoveni group ( Koch 2006). Following the key of Benson (1962), Chevin (1985) misidentified over 1000 specimens as A. sjoestedti . Based on this material collected from 1981 to 1983 by means of yellow traps in potato fields he found a univoltine life cycle. The phenology is also illustrated by Koch (2007: fig. 14) under the correct name A. marginipennis .