Banyutus pulverulentus ( Rambur, 1842 )

Wachkoo, Aijaz Ahmad, Kaur, Simarjit, Akbar, Shahid Ali, Hassan, Muhammad Asghar, Pandher, Manpreet Singh & Oswald, John D., 2024, Catalog of the Neuropterida of India (Insecta: Neuroptera, Megaloptera, Raphidioptera), Zootaxa 5544 (1), pp. 1-128 : 94

Banyutus pulverulentus ( Rambur, 1842)

Myrmeleon pulverulentus Rambur, 1842: 392 . Type Locality: South (or southern) Africa (locality unknown), not pre-partition India, Bengal [Bengale].

Formicaleo atomarius Navás, 1912h: 64 . Type Locality: South Africa (Blocksberg: Johannesburg).

Formicaleo natalicus Navás, 1912g: 247 . Type Locality: South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal: Natal ).

World distribution: South Africa [not India] ( Rambur 1842: 392; Navás 1912h: 65; Stange 2004: 132; Oswald 2024a).

Note: No confirmed occurrence records are known from India. All Indian occurrence citations (e.g., Rambur 1842: 392; Walker 1853: 336; Ghosh & Sen 1977: 312; Ghosh 1984: 25; Ghosh 1999: 137; Chandra & Sharma 2010: 18) appear to trace back to the apparently incorrect original type locality statement “Bengale” (a region in eastern pre-partition India) for Myrmeleon pulverulentus by Rambur (1842: 392). Stange (2004: 132) synonymized two nominal species from South Africa ( Formicaleo atomarius and F. natalicus ) under pulverulentus , which strongly implies that the true type locality of pulverulentus lies somewhere in South (or southern) Africa. The species is excluded from the Indian fauna on this basis.