Sphaerophoria oleandri Rondani, 1857

Sforzi, Alessandra & Sommaggio, Daniele, 2021, Catalog of the Diptera types described by Camillo Rondani, Zootaxa 4989 (1), pp. 1-438 : 268

Sphaerophoria oleandri Rondani, 1857

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: 1857: 111 (key), 114 (description).

TYPE LOCALITY: “ in Melita [ Malta]” .

TYPE MATERIAL: 2 ♂♂ (one of them is surely the holotype but is not labeled as such) ( MZUF: Box 4) with the following labels: 1 ♂ (missing head and right hind-leg, abdomen partially eaten by dermestids, terminalia in a microvial pinned below specimen), Sphaerophoria Lep. Serv. / oleandri Schembri / 175 / Sphaerophoria oleandri Rnd. , lectotype [incorrectly designated] designated Vockeroth, 71; 1 ♂, Sphaerophoria Lep. Serv. / oleandri Schembri / 175 / = Sphaerophoria rüppelli Wied., P. Goeldlin det. 1971.

CURRENT STATUS: junior synonym of Sphaerophoria rueppelli ( Wiedemann, 1830) ( Peck 1988: 44) .

REMARKS: Rondani (1857: 114) described Sphaerophoria oleandri from a single male: “ unico exemplare masculo … invento a Doct. Schembri [single male specimen]”, received from Schembri, to whom he attributed the species name. Vockeroth (1971: 1632) incorrectly designated one of the two MZUF males as the lectotype. There are two males in the MZUF without any label indicating their type status. We are unable to single out the male upon which Rondani based his description. We leave the recognition of the holotype to a future specialist. There is a MZUF specimen (Box A) from “Insubria” [= Lombardy] and a MSNC male from “Parma”, neither of which are from the type locality.