Ceroptres quercuspisum ( Fitch, 1859 ), 2019

Lobato-Vila, Irene & Pujade-Villar, Juli, 2019, Revision of world Ceroptresini (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) with the description of a new genus and five new species, Zootaxa 4685 (1), pp. 1-67 : 61

Ceroptres quercuspisum ( Fitch, 1859) incertae sedis

Cynips q. pisum Fitch, 1859 . Trans. N. Y. State Agr. Soc. 18: 818. Type material: presumably lost.

Ceroptres quercus-pisum (Fitch) Weld, 1951 . U. S. Dept. Agr., Agr. Monog. 2: 614.

Ceroptres quercuspisum (Fitch) Burks in Krombein et al. 1979 . Smithson. Ins. Press: 1065.

Distribution. USA. State of New York (according to Burks (1979)).

Biology. Reared from galls of Acraspis pezomachoides (Osten-Sacken, 1862) according to Osten-Sacken (1865: 369) on oaks of Quercus section , according to Pénzes et al. (2012).

Remarks. Walsh (1864: 494) mentions that C. quercuspisum is a possible synonymy of Synophrus ? laeviventris and so of C. quercusficus . As we stated in the remarks section of C. quercusficus, Osten-Sacken (1865: 375) transferred Synophrus ? laeviventris to Synergus , which clearly differs from C. quercusficus . However, the type material of C. quercuspisum is presumably lost, being neither deposited in ANSP (online database consulted), CAS (R. Zuparko pers. comm.), MCZ (Charles W. Farnum pers. comm.) nor USNM (collection examined), and Fitch’s original description (1859: 818) for Cynips q. pisum is very poor and thus insufficient to distinguish this species from the rest of Ceroptres ; therefore, we cannot confirm the synonymy proposed by Walsh. Osten-Sacken (1865: 369) says ‘that Cynips q. pisum Fitch is not the gall-fly of the gall described by Dr. Fitch, but a guest-fly, seems certain, since the discovery of C. pezomachoides O.S.’, and later adds ‘but whether this guest-fly is identical with Ceroptres pisum O.S. is rather doubtful’, without giving significant clues to neither characterize and distinguish C. quercuspisum from this or any other Ceroptres species, to consider Osten-Sacken’s and Fitch’s species as synonyms nor even to know if it really corresponds to Ceroptres . Hence, we propose to place Ceroptres quercuspisum ( Fitch, 1859) as incertae sedis until the original material is found and studied.