Spintharina alexandri (du Buysson, 1894)

Boustani, Mira & Rosa, Paolo, 2022, Survey of cuckoo wasps of Lebanon (Hymenoptera: Chrysididae) with description of four new species, Zootaxa 5104 (1), pp. 1-39 : 32

Spintharina alexandri (du Buysson, 1894) *

Spintharis mocsaryi Radoszkowski, 1890: 508 . Holotype ♂; Turkey: Buyuk Agri Dag (Mt. Ararat) (depository unknown).

Chrysis alexandri du Buysson, 1894: 390 . Holotype ♂; Turkey: Buyuk Agri Dag ( Mt. Ararat ) (depository unknown).

Material examined. N. Lebanon: Bcharre , 1500 m, 1.vii.1960, 1♂, leg. G.A. Mavromoustakis, det. W. Linsenmaier 1973 ( NMLU) .

Distribution. * Lebanon. South-eastern Europe, Turkey, Cyprus, Palestine ( Balthasar 1953; Linsenmaier 1959); Egypt ( Linsenmaier 1999).

Remarks. The type of Spintharis mocsaryi from Ararat was examined by du Buysson (1894) and re-described under the name Chrysis alexandri du Buysson, 1894 . In fact, du Buysson (1894) included in the genus Chrysis both Chrysis mocsaryi Radoszkowski, 1889 and Spintharis mocsaryi Radoszkowski, 1890 , thus the latter became a secondary junior homonym. Linsenmaier (1959, 1999) identified all the specimens from East Mediterranean countries and the Middle East as Chrysis (Spintharina) vagans , yet he did not know any real topotypic specimens from Central Asia. Spintharina alexandri can be easily separated from Spintharina vagans by the shape of the transversal frontal carina, simple and regularly arched (du Buysson 1894). One specimen in Radoszkowski’s collection (Rosa et al. 2015) has been erroneously considered as a type.