Monepidosis duplicis Mamaev, 1998

Jaschhof, Mathias & Jaschhof, Catrin, 2020, The Porricondylini (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae: Porricondylinae) of Sweden revisited: descriptions of nineteen new species of ten genera, including a new genus, Zootaxa 4728 (2), pp. 151-182 : 180

Monepidosis duplicis Mamaev

= M. tinnerti Jaschhof & Jaschhof syn. nov.

Prompted by the discovery of a Monepidosis with male genitalia largely similar to that of M. tinnerti (see our description here of M. difficilis ), we reread the descriptions of M. duplicis available in the literature (Mamaev 1998; Spungis 2006). The inconsistencies we noticed led us to study three of the five specimens ever assigned to M. duplicis , including the holotype, for which we requested a micrograph of the genitalia (type number P-Di0360 in the Zoological Museum, Lomonosov State University, Moscow). This settled any doubts that M. duplicis is the same species we described a few years ago as M. tinnerti , meaning the latter name becomes a junior synonym. In our diagnosis of M. tinnerti ( Jaschhof & Jaschhof 2015: 168) we pointed out that this was the only Monepidosis with a bifurcate aedeagal apodeme, something we had concluded from the pertinent literature. Mamaev (1998: 5), in his original publication of M. duplicis , described the aedeagal apodeme to have an arrow-shaped apical portion with a divided end (an illustration was not provided), whereas Spungis (2006: 24), in his redescription of M. duplicis , merely referred to the “arrow-shaped distal third” of the apodeme, which he illustrated accordingly (fig. 3A). Spungis (2005) did not ignore the additional presence of two short processes, but interpreted these as belonging to the ventral gonocoxal bridge, not the aedeagal apodeme―a misinterpretation we followed when assessing the characters of M. tinnerti .

Apart from the Far East of Russia, where the type material was collected (Mamaev 1998), M. duplicis was subsequently reported to occur in Latvia and Ukraine ( Spungis 2006). We examined the two specimens on which the latter two reports were based and found that the Latvian specimen is indeed conspecific with M. duplicis , while the Ukrainian specimen belongs to a different, unnamed species close to both M. duplicis and M. difficilis . The presence of M. duplicis in Sweden is evidenced by the specimen designated as holotype of M. tinnerti , a male from Uppland (see Jaschhof & Jaschhof 2015).