Ceroptres quercusficu

Lobato-Vila, Irene & Pujade-Villar, Juli, 2019, Revision of world Ceroptresini (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) with the description of a new genus and five new species, Zootaxa 4685 (1), pp. 1-67 : 61

Ceroptres quercusficu s ( Fitch, 1859) nom. dub.

Cynips q. ficus Fitch, 1859 . Trans. N. Y. State Agr. Soc. 18: 812. Type material: USNM [Poor conditions].

Ceroptres ficus (Fitch) Osten-Sacken, 1865 . Proc. Ent. Soc. Phila. 4: 368 [Unjustified emendation for specific name]. Ceroptres quercus-ficus (Fitch) Weld, 1951 . U. S. Dept. Agr., Agr. Monog. 2: 614.

Ceroptres quercusficus (Fitch) Burks in Krombein et al. 1979 . Smithson. Ins. Press: 1065.

Distribution. USA. State of New York, according to Burks (1979).

Biology. Reared from galls of Xanthoteras quercusforticone ( Walsh, 1864) on Q. alba , according to Osten- Sacken (1865: 350, 369).

Remarks. Walsh (1864: 494) mentions that C. quercusficus is a possible synonymy of Synophrus ? laeviventris Osten-Sacken, 1861, but Osten-Sacken (1865: 375) transferred Synophrus ? laeviventris to Synergus . We examined the type material of Synophrus ? laeviventris deposited in MCZ and confirmed that it belongs to Synergus , clearly differing from that of C. quercusficus . However, the type material of C. quercusficus , which is deposited in USNM (4♀ pierced through the mesosoma by thin pins, all four mounted on a piece of wood in the same pin with ‘Fitch’s type’ and ‘Fitch’s coll’ labels), is in poor conditions, thus making it hard to appreciate some of its diagnostic morphological traits, and Fitch’s original description (1859: 812) for Cynips q. ficus is very poor and thus insufficient to distinguish this species from the rest of Ceroptres . Osten-Sacken (1865: 368), who transferred the species to Ceroptres , says nothing new about its morphology. Hence, we here propose to place Ceroptres quercusficus ( Fitch, 1859) as nomen dubium, because the type material deposited in USNM corresponds to Ceroptres , but it is impossible to recognize the species morphologically.