Pepsis Fabricius, 1804

Waichert, Cecilia, Rodriguez, Juanita, Von Dohlen, Carol D. & Pitts, James P., 2012, Spider wasps (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae) of the Dominican Republic, Zootaxa 3353 (1), pp. 1-47 : 17

Pepsis Fabricius, 1804

Type species Pepsis stellata Fabricius, 1793 , designated by Latreille 1810.

Remarks. The following species of Pepsis were represented in our studied sample: P. marginata Palisot de Beauvois , P. rubra (Drury) , and P. ruficornis (Fabricius) . Perez-Gelabert (2008), however, recorded additional species for the Hisponiola Island: Pepsis cassiope Mocsáry , P. caerulea (Linnaeus) , P. nana Mocsáry , P. sericans Lepeletier , and P. sulphuricornis Palisot de Beauvois.

There are several issues concerning the distribution and validity of the species recorded by Perez-Gelabert (2008). Pepsis caerulea and P. sulphuricornis are no longer recognized as Pepsis . These species were classified as Entypus by Day (1979) (see Entypus section). Pepsis cassiope is found from the Southern USA to Bolivia, Colombia east through Guyana to the Amazon delta, and the southeast coast of Brazil ( Vardy 2002). The single records for Mexico and Dominican Republic are dubious ( Vardy 2002). As pointed by Perez-Gelabert (2008), P. nana is found only in South America in the eastern Andes, and the specimens recorded from Haiti are probably mislabeled ( Vardy 2005). Pepsis sericans is the senior synonym of a complex of names that includes Pepsis domingensis Lepeletier and its variaties ( Vardy 2000). Although P. domingensis had been described from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Vardy (2000) stated that the distribution of P. sericans is limited to Cuba and the record of this species from the Dominican Republic is also dubious.

Because our study did not reveal any of these species in the Dominican Republic, because Pepsis was recently reviewed, and because these species have dubious records attributed to the Dominican Republic, P. cassiope , P. nana , and P. sericans were not included in our key nor in our list of species of the Dominican Republic Pompilidae .