Lichtwardtia ziczac (Wiedemann, 1824)

Tang, Chufei, Yang, Ding & Grootaert, Patrick, 2018, Revision of the genus Lichtwardtia Enderlein in Southeast Asia, a tale of highly diverse male terminalia (Diptera, Dolichopodidae), ZooKeys 798, pp. 63-107 : 63

Lichtwardtia ziczac (Wiedemann, 1824) Figure 25

Dolichopus ziczac Wiedemann, 1824: 40. Female. Type locality: India Orientalis

Dolichopus ziczac Wiedemann, 1830: 232

Dolichopus zickzack Wiedemann, 1824. Male in Becker 1922: 8, figure 1. Non ziczac sensu Wiedemann 1824

Lichtwardtia ziczac (Wiedemann, 1824) sensu Zhang, Masunaga & Yang, 2009: 199, figs 11-14.

Material examined.

Holotype female, India Orientalis, on pin in collection ZMUC (Copenhagen).

Diagnosis.

Female. A medium-sized species (body: 4 mm; wing: 3.2 mm). Wing hyaline with anterior border faintly brownish and cross veins brownish seamed. No swelling of the costa before or at the point where R1 joins the costa. The ratio of the proximal section of M1, and the distal section is 0.4/0.6 (Figure 25). Thus the distal section is much longer than the proximal section. Fore coxa yellow, mid coxa brown and hind coxa yellowish.

Comments.

Dolichopus ziczac was described by Wiedemann (1824) on the basis of a female collected in India Orientalis. No precision is given about the locality so that the type locality could be everywhere in the Oriental region ranging from Pakistan to New Guinea at that time. The description of the species in the work of Wiedemann (1824) is very short, but fortunately the holotype female is still well preserved in the collections of the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen.

Becker (1922) knew about this specimen but did not see it. A colleague described it to him in a letter and Becker was sure that the specimens that he had in his own collection or had seen at the Hungarian Museum from Taiwan (China), India, Bangladesh, Rangoon (Myanmar), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and the Bismarck Archipelago (Papua New Guinea) were all the same species. The range is thus also very wide according to Becker. He gave a description of a male but did not mention the origin of the male. Hence we cannot rely on his re-description that fits to quite a number of species. At the same time he put Rhagoneurus coxalis Kertész, 1901, Lichtwardtia formosana Enderlein, 1912 and Rhagoneurus polychromus Loew, 1864 all Lichtwardtia species as junior synonyms of L. ziczac . Now we see that all are good species and we re-establish here their names as valid species. The previous holotype female is examined (Figure 25). It is not clear why Becker (1922) changed the name ziczac to zickzack .

Brownish seams along the cross veins are not very common in Lichtwardtia and actually only known in L. ziczac and L. singaporensis sp. n. The ratio of the proximal section of M1, and the distal section is however 0.435/0.564. Thus the distal section is not as long as in L. ziczac . We do not consider both species as conspecific for the moment because in the near future it might be possible to extract ancient DNA from the holotype without using destructive techniques. This can be decisive about the status of both species. We propose to consider L. ziczac (Wiedemann) from terra incognita as a nomen dubium and not to complicate again the taxonomy of Lichtwardtia by applying the name ziczac to the male of singaporensis without genetic information. Remarkable is that among the more than 200 Lichtwardtia specimens belonging to six species that we found in Seam Reap, no specimens with brownish seamed cross veins were found.