Alloxysta victrix ( Westwood, 1833 ), 2011

Ferrer-Suay, Mar, Selfa, Jesús, Alonso-Zarazaga, Miguel A. & Pujade-Villar, Juli, 2013, Revision of Alloxysta from the Curtis collection (Hymenoptera: Figitidae: Charipinae) deposited in Museum Victoria (Australia), Memoirs of Museum Victoria 70, pp. 11-16 : 15

Alloxysta victrix ( Westwood, 1833)

(= Cynips fulviceps Curtis, 1838 )

Combinations of Cynips fulviceps Curtis ( Curtis, 1838, p. 688); Allotria fulviceps (Curtis) ( Kieffer, 1900, p. 114) ; Allotria (Allotria) fulviceps (Curtis) ( Dalla Torre and Kieffer, 1902, p. 41) ; Charips (Charips) fulviceps (Curtis) ( Dalla Torre and Kieffer, 1910, p. 288) ; Alloxysta fulviceps (Curtis) ( Fitton, 1978, p. 65) ; Alloxysta victrix (Westwood) ( Pujade-Villar et al., 2011, p. 68) .

The study of Alloxysta fulviceps (Curtis) type material was recently treated in a previous paper ( Pujade-Villar et al., 2011). The type series consists of three specimens; Kerrich designated the holotype in 1948 without publishing it. Quinlan and Fergusson (1981) published Kerrich’s conclusions. This specimen cannot be the holotype but must be the lectotype, according to Article 74.6 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ( ICZN, 1999), because Curtis did not mention the number of specimens used for its description. On the other hand, this specimen was considered lost according to Catriona McPhee (pers. comm., 21 Feb 2011). For this reason Pujade-Villar et al. (2011) designated a new lectotype for this species after thoroughly studying the original description by Curtis. In the same paper, A. fulviceps was considered to be a new synonym of Alloxysta victrix ( Westwood, 1833) .

However, after revising the Curtis collection the ‘holotype’ designated by Kerrich has been found. Due to several characters differing from Curtis’s original description it cannot be considered a syntype of Cynips fulviceps and it is here rejected as such: (i) the mesosoma and metasoma are not dark as Curtis mentioned in his description, they are brown; (ii) the base of the antennae are not ochre, they are yellowish; (iii) the club shape and brown colour of antennae begin on F4, not at the base as Curtis mentioned in his description; (iv) F1 is much longer than F2, not merely ‘scarcely longer’ as Curtis described; (v) in Curtis’s description, the shape of the radial cell is not mentioned, so the decision of choosing a specimen with closed or partially open radial cell is not decisive to design the lectotype. For all these reasons, and according to Article 74.2 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ( ICZN, 1999), this specimen loses its status as lectotype, and the true lectotype of Cynips fulviceps Curtis is the specimen designated by Pujade-Villar et al. (2011). So, this species is a synonym of Alloxysta victrix , as Pujade-Villar et al. (2011) proposed.