Ceroptres quercusarbos ( Fitch, 1859 ), 2019

Lobato-Vila, Irene & Pujade-Villar, Juli, 2019, Revision of world Ceroptresini (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) with the description of a new genus and five new species, Zootaxa 4685 (1), pp. 1-67 : 60

Ceroptres quercusarbos ( Fitch, 1859) incertae sedis

Cynips q. arbos Fitch, 1859 . N. Y. Trans. State Agr. Soc. 18: 809. Type material: destroyed.

Ceroptres arbos (Fitch) Osten-Sacken, 1865 . Proc. Ent. Soc. Phila. 4: 370 [Unjustified emendation for specific name]. Ceroptres quercus-arbos (Fitch) Weld, 1951 . U. S. Dept. Agr., Agr. Monog. 2: 614.

Ceroptres quercusarbos (Fitch) Burks in Krombein et al. 1979 . Smithson. Ins. Press: 1065.

Distribution. USA. State of New York (according to Burks (1979)).

Biology. Reared from galls of Callirhytis clavula ( Osten-Sacken, 1865) on Q. alba , according to Osten-Sacken (1865: 350).

Remarks. The type material of this species, which was deposited in USNM, was destroyed (only Fitch’s original label remaining without an insect on the pin) according to Melika & Buss (2002); like these authors, we only found an empty pin with the original Fitch’s type label in the USNM collection. Furthermore, Fitch’s original description (1859: 809) for Cynips q. arbos is very poor and thus insufficient to distinguish this species from the rest of Ceroptres , and even to establish whether it really belongs to Ceroptres . Osten-Sacken (1865: 370) only transferred the species to Ceroptres , saying nothing about its morphology. Hence, we here propose to place Ceroptres quercusarbos ( Fitch, 1859) as incertae sedis.