Hedychridium biskranum Linsenmaier, 1999

Rosa, Paolo, Farhad, Afrouz, Talebi, Ali Asghar, Ameri, Ali, Baiocchi, Daniele, Halada, Marek & Rakhshani, Ehsan, 2024, The Iranian Chrysididae (Hymenoptera), the current state of the art, with an updated checklist and description of eleven new species, Journal of Insect Biodiversity and Systematics 10 (4), pp. 827-951 : 835

Hedychridium biskranum Linsenmaier, 1999

Hedychridium ( Hedychridium) biskranum Linsenmaier, 1999:85 . Holotype ♀; Algeria: Biskra, 25.v.1948, leg. R. M. Naef (Luzern).

Hedychridium biskranum : Tavasoli & Fallahzadeh, 2015:82 ( Fars); Strumia et al., 2016b:52 ( Fars); Falahatpisheh et al., 2019:3 ( Fars).

Distribution. Iran ( Fars). Algeria ( Linsenmaier, 1999), Türkiye ( Strumia et al., 2016b).

Remarks. The identification of Hedychridium biskranum is considered doubtful and the recorded specimens may refer to another species of the H. roseum species-group based on biogeographical data. At the moment, Hedychridium biskranum is known with certainty only on the holotype, collected in Biskra ( Algeria) ( Rosa et al., 2022). The identification was based on Linsenmaier’s (1999) key for the Chrysididae of Northern Africa, without type examination. However, the species concept is unclear because H. biskranum belongs to the most complicated species-group in the genus Hedychridium , and its description is challenging as it is based on variable diagnostic characters. Strumia et al. (2016b) reported the discovery of an additional two specimens of H. biskranum collected in Türkiye. However, no further details such as descriptions, illustrations, or images were provided to substantiate their identification. We suppose that the specimens examined may belong to one of the other species recently described by Arens (2010) for Anatolia, and therefore not keyed in Linsenmaier (1999), or to a Central Asian species described by Semenov-Tian-Shanskij ( Rosa et al., 2017a). Strumia did not consider Semenov’s publications ( Strumia & Fallahzadeh, 2015) and Arens’ work (2010).