Cyrtisiopsis maculiventris ( Loew, 1874 ) Loew, 1874

Gharali, Babak, Evenhuis, Neal, Kamali, Karim & Talebi, Ali Asghar, 2011, A review of the genus Platypygus Loew (Mythicomyiidae: Platypyginae) in Iran, with notes on Cyrtisiopsis maculiventris (Loew) n. comb., Zootaxa 2979, pp. 25-40 : 38

Cyrtisiopsis maculiventris ( Loew, 1874) , new combination

Platypygus maculiventris Loew, 1874: 416 .

Specimens examined. 1 female specimen, IRAN: Abazar, Abazar village, Ghazvin province, N36°17', E50°10', 1463 m asl., 12 June 2009, white pan trapping, leg. B. Gharali.

Originally, Loew (1874) found a male specimen of P. maculiventris from Shahrood (a city in the northeast of Iran in the territory of Semnan province) and described his new species briefly in Latin as follows:

“Luteus, thoracis dorso praeter vittas ordinarias, scutello, pleuris halteribusque dilute flavis, proboscide, tertio antennarum articulo, maculâ frontis collique maculis nigris, utrâque suturae parte puncto nigro notatâ abdomineque seriatim nigro-maculato; alae hyalinae.”

This description includes some common features (yellow body color and three segmented antennae), that are found in species of both Platypygus and Cyrtisiopsis ; it also gives a few diagnostic characters such as hairy mesonotum, black spots on mesonotum next to transverse suture (see Fig. 9 c), yellow scutellum, presence of black mark on frons (see Fig. 9 b), and hyaline wings. These diagnostic characters match well with Cyrtisiopsis melleus and our single specimen of P. maculiventris . Relying on a single specimen to describe a new species and short description caused the taxonomic validity of this species to be questionable by some subsequent authors.

Apparently, Engel (1933) checked the holotype and an additional specimen of Platypygus maculiventris and concluded that this species is only a variety of P. m el le u s. He treated P. melleus in the subgenus Cyrtisiopsis , which was originally described by Séguy (1930) for the single African species, Cyrtisiopsis ornatus Séguy. Efflatoun (1945) subsequently showed that his specimens of P. maculiventris had some unique rows of black rhomboid dots on the abdominal tergites although one or two spots may be absent in rows, nevertheless he considered this species as a variety of P. m e l l e u s. As opposed to previous authors, Paramonov (1934) followed Loew’s concept and considered P. m a c u l i v e n t r i s as a valid species. He examined two female specimens of P. m a c u l i v e n t r i s and described them in detail, but interestingly without reexamination or redescription of the male type. The type specimen may have been lost at that time (see Evenhuis, 2002). Paramonov (1934) mentioned that P. maculiventris is similar to P. a l g i - rus and P. melleus and the coalescing of the three longitudinal black stripes in the posterior part of the mesonotum is the diagnostic character for this species. All three authors (Engel, Efflatoun, and Paramonov) agreed that this species is closely related to Cyrtisiopsis melleus once the taxonomic value of postgena, the relative length of basal cells to each other (see Fig. 9 d), and the status of the discal cell was known, so it is inferred that these characters were the same in C. melleus and P. maculiventris . Additionally, the postgena in P. maculiventris extends posteriorly as an acute process (see Fig. 9 a), wing cell br is equal to cell bm and the discal cell is closed. The extended postgenal character is not seen in the five species of Platypygus that we closely examined and this character is considered as one of diagnostic characters of the genus Cyrtisiopsis ( Greathead & Evenhuis 2001) ( Fig. 9 ). The basal cell character is found rarely in the genus Platypygus (e.g., in P. pumilio Loew, 1873 ); and the discal cell character is diagnostic to both genera. Hence, we feel P. maculiventris is a member of Cyrtisiopsis and here transfer it to that genus as Cyrtisiopsis maculiventris , comb. nov. Also, we feel C. maculiventris should be considered as a valid species until more specimens of C. melleus are collected and the range of variability in both species are completely understood.

Figures

FIGURE 9. Cyrtisiopsis maculiventris: a—head (lateral view), b—head (anterior view), c—mesonotum (dorsal view), dwing.