Limnocoris profundus (Say)

Rodrigues, Higor D. D. & Sites, Robert W., 2019, Revision of Limnocoris (Heteroptera: Nepomorpha: Naucoridae) of North America, Zootaxa 4629 (4), pp. 451-497 : 482-483

Limnocoris profundus (Say)

Naucoris profunda Say, 1832: 363 (original description). Borborocoris profundus: Stål 1862: 461 (new combination). Limnocoris profundus: Stål 1876: 145 (new combination); Uhler 1886: 28 (catalog); Torre-Bueno 1906: 52 (catalog); Kirkaldy & Torre-Bueno 1909: 183 (catalog); La Rivers 1971: 76 (catalog, synonymy); La Rivers 1974: 10 (catalog, synonymy); La Rivers 1976: 12–13 (catalog); Nieser & López-Ruf 2001: 319 (catalog).

Discussion. Naucoris profunda Say, 1832 was described from material collected in Mexico, but the number of specimens in the type series was not given. In his study on the Hemiptera of Mexico, Stål (1862) transferred N. profunda to the genus he had recently created, Borborocoris Stål, 1861 , and modified the specific epithet to agree with the genus: B. profundus (Say) . Later, Stål (1876) transferred B. profundus to the genus Limnocoris and recorded this species from Venezuela. Montandon (1897) had access to the collection of C. Stål, deposited in the Swedish Museum of Natural History, for his revision of Limnocorinae . He noted the specimens identified by Stål (1876) as L. profundus from Venezuela belonged to another species, which he described in the revision as L. stali Montandon, 1897 . In addition to the specimens from Venezuela, the type series of L. stali comprised specimens from Bolivia, Guatemala and “N.lle Grenade, Ocana” [ Colombia]. Montandon noted that he did not examine any specimens with the characters given in the original description of L. profundus (probably he did not have access to type material of L. profundus ); thus, he left aside L. profundus and described the species he had as new. Among the species described by Montandon, L. signoreti was described based on specimens from Mexico previously identified as L. profundus by the French entomologist Victor Signoret (1816–1889).

The revision of Montandon (1897) resulted in L. profundus and L. signoreti from Mexico, and L. stali from Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, and Venezuela, which were subsequently cited in the catalogs of Torre-Bueno (1906) and Kirkaldy & Torre-Bueno (1909). La Rivers (1971, 1974) in his catalogs of Naucoridae proposed L. stali as a junior synonym of L. profundus . However, in the second supplement to the catalog of the family, La Rivers (1976) discounted the synonymy between these species, and provided the following comment: “ L. profundus has been used twice—first by Say in 1832, then by Stål in 1862. Montandon re-named Stål’s species stali in 1897. Stål was aware of Say’s species, but described his profundus in the genus Borborocoris , which later became a syn. of Limnocoris .” However, Stål (1862) did not describe a new species, but simply transferred Naucoris profunda to Borborocoris .

Although much of Thomas Say’s collection is known to have been lost, we searched for specimens that could be of the type series of L. profundus (Say) in American and European collections, but were unsuccessful. Mawdsley (1993) provided a list of remaining specimens from the collection of Thomas Say deposited in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZC), which included no specimens of Naucoridae . Nieser & López- Ruf (2001) provided a list of species of Limnocoris with their primary type depositories, and indicated that the L. profundus holotype was deposited in the USNM; however, this was refuted by Thomas Henry (pers. comm.), curator of Hemiptera at the USNM. Unfortunately, the type series of Limnocoris profundus (Say, 1832) apparently is lost as are many other Say types, and the original description is insufficient to establish the identity of the species. We hence treat L. profundus (Say) as a nomen dubium.