Toxorhynchites (Toxorhynchites) inornatus (Walker)

Harbach, Ralph E. & Wilkerson, Richard C., 2023, The insupportable validity of mosquito subspecies (Diptera: Culicidae) and their exclusion from culicid classification, Zootaxa 5303 (1), pp. 1-184 : 125-126

Toxorhynchites (Toxorhynchites) inornatus (Walker)

subspecies albitarsis ( Brug, 1939) —original combination: Megarhinus inornatus var. albitarsis (subspecific status by Stone et al. 1959). Distribution: Indonesia (Sulawesi) ( Brug 1939).

subspecies inornatus ( Walker, 1865) —original combination: Megarhina inornata . Distribution: Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea ( Wilkerson et al. 2021), including the Islands Region ( Bismarck Archipelago) of Papua New Guinea and tentatively Buru Island of Indonesia ( Lee et al. 1988b).

Walker (1865) described Tx. inornatus (as Megarhina inornata ) from an undisclosed number of adult males from New Guinea. Theobald (1901a) redescribed inornatus “from two specimens in the British Museum, one presumably Walker’s type of the ♂ described in Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. viii. p. 102. A female is placed with it with broadly banded tarsi, the bands of white being basal. They both come from New Guinea, and are evidently a ♂ and ♀ of the same species. The caudal tuft is clearly yellow and black, although no mention is made of it in Walker’s short description.” Surprisingly, despite the existence of the “type” specimen denoted by Theobald (1901a) and Edwards (1923b), and its recognition as the holotype ♂ by Belkin (1962), Steffan & White (1981) found it necessary to designate a lectotype from “Walker’s series” to represent the species. Although inexplicable, we must assume that Steffan & White had good reasons for designating a lectotype, and it should be regarded as the type specimen.

Brug (1939) described albitarsis as a variety of Megarhinus inornatus from four males “reared from larvae found in leaf-axillae of Colocasia in Kalawara (Celebes)”, a town in present-day Central Sulawesi, Indonesia [ albitarsis was raised to subspecific status by Stone et al. (1959) without explanation]. Brug noted that albitarsis is distinguished from the type form “by the scales of the vertex being bluish green instead of bronzy green; by most of the scales on the posterior pronotal lobe [postpronotum] being white instead of green. The white parties [bands] on the mid and hind tarsus are more extensive, in the typical form those on the second and mid and hind tarsal joint occupying half the length at most. However, the typical form has a white patch on the first hind tarsal [hindtarsomere 1], which var. albitarsis has not. In the former there are well defined white lateral patches on the abdominal tergites [terga], in the latter at most some scattered white scales.” Unfortunately, the adult female, larva and pupa of albitarsis are unknown, and it is not possible to make comparisons with published descriptions of the female ( Theobald 1901a; Edwards 1923b; Belkin 1962), larva and pupa ( Belkin 1962) of the type form. For the time being, it is only possible to compare features of the male of albitarsis described by Brug (1939) with those described for the male of the type form ( Brug 1939; Edwards 1923b; Belkin 1962), as shown in Table 6 .

Characters marked with an asterisk (*) appear to be diagnostic for albitarsis . The other characters are liable to variation or subjective perception. Although anatomical data for the female and immature stages of albitarsis are not available for comparison with those of the type form, we believe that the characters of the male identified with asterisks are sufficiently diagnostic to warrant recognition of albitarsis as separate species: Toxorhynchites (Toxorhynchites) albitarsis ( Brug, 1939) . It should be noted that albitarsis is only known from Sulawesi and has not been identified in other areas of the Australasian Region where only Tx. inornatus has been found; thus, the two species appear to be isolated from one another. Toxorhynchites albitarsis is currently listed as a species in the Encyclopedia of Life.