Reduvius semifasciatus Walker, 1873

Liu, Yingqi & Cai, Wanzhi, 2024, Revision of Australian Brachysandalus with the description of nine new species including one cavernicolous species (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Reduviidae), and observations on male extragenital structure and leg teratology, Zootaxa 5490 (1), pp. 1-112 : 102

Reduvius semifasciatus Walker, 1873

Reduvius semifasciatus Walker, 1873: 202 .

Type locality: Australia. Synonymized with Brachysandalus fuliginosus ( Erichson, 1842) by Cassis & Gross (1995: 341). Synonymy discarded in the present study, see notes below.

Notes. Reduvius semifasciatus Walker, 1873 was described from two female specimens (syntypes, which were probably missing as we didn’t find them in NHM with the help of curators) from Australia with the following data: “a. Australia. Presented by the Entomological Club” and “b. Australia. From Mr. Damel’s collection”. From the NHM library register, “the Entomological Club” appears under number “1844.12” and “Edward Damel” appears under number “1858.124”: “ Australia; Sydney & Moreton Bay; the localities are Maitland "Partinston". Moreton Bay , Wollanggong, Paramatta. Sydney.; bought of Samuel; Collected by Edward Damel”.

Cassis & Gross (1995: 341) noted the types were missing but nonetheless synonymized R. semifasciatus with B. fuliginosus ( Erichson, 1842) . We could not find any specimen matching Walker’s original description for label data but also Walker’s description of R. semifasciatus does not match colour of the hemelytron, leg and abdomen of B. fuliginosus (types deposited in MFN, Berlin. Fig. 14 ), i.e., “…Abdomen tawny, piceous beneath. Knees tawny… Fore wing blackish, luteous at the base, and with a luteous subcostal patch, which on its hind side joins an irregular whitish band and has on its outer side a forked whitish streak….”. Besides, “Fore lobe of the prothorax distinctly furrowed, rather shorter than the hind lobe” in the original description indicates that R. semifasciatus can’t be a peiratine species because Peiratinae have a transverse sulcus on the pronotum behind the middle of the pronotum ( Weirauch et al., 2014). Therefore, the synonym proposed by Cassis & Gross is considered to be an error. And the specimens under the name semifasciatus in NHM listed above are probably B. fuliginosus and were misidentified due to this synonym, the types of R. semifasciatus are still considered missing.

Figures

FIGURE 14. Brachysandalus fuliginosus (Erichson, 1842), habitus. A–C, lectotype, macropterous male; D–F, paralectotype, brachypterous female. A, D, dorsal view; B, E, ventral view; C, F, lateral view. Red arrow indicates median carina on abdomen.