Formicococcus lingnani (Ferris)

Joshi, Sunil, Jose, Bindu K., Gullan, Penny, Sajeev, T. V. & Anoop, E. V., 2020, A new species of mealybug (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha: Pseudococcidae) from Tectona grandis L. f. (Lamiaceae) in southern India, Zootaxa 4718 (3), pp. 391-400 : 394

Formicococcus lingnani (Ferris) revived combination

Planococcus lingnani Ferris 1954: 52 .

Planococcoides lingnani Williams 1970: 163 . Change of combination.

Formicococcus lingnani Williams 2004: 290 . Change of combination.

Paraputo lingnani Danzig & Gavrilov-Zimin 2015: 18 . Change of combination.

Formicococcus lingnani was redescribed by Williams (1970) from material collected from Malaysia, China and Thailand; he found these materials to be in agreement with the original material from China, with minor morphological differences, hence in Williams (2004) he made two illustrations based on specimens from China and Thailand. He further suggested inclusion of this species in Exallomochlus Williams because of the presence of a sclerotized area on the dorsum and venter of each anal lobe, but retained it in Formicococcus because of the presence of anal lobe bars each connected to an anal lobe bar seta. The species has been collected on Cyperus rotundus L. ( Cyperaceae ) and Areca catechu L. ( Arecaceae ) from Karnataka, India (S. Joshi, unpublished data). Danzig & Gavrilov-Zimin (2015) transferred the species to Paraputo Laing because it has 6 anal ring setae, which is not justifiable based on the facts provided on the revived combination of F. robustus in the discussion above.

The only molecular phylogenetic study ( Hardy et al. 2008) that has included examples of Paraputo found that the sampled African species was not related to the sampled Neotropical species. There appear to have been no molecular phylogenetic studies including species of Formicococcus . The taxonomy of Formicococcus and Paraputo may change in the future if informative new data become available; however, the stability of nomenclature is important to users and changes should be avoided unless there is strong justification.