Heptamelus Haliday, 1855

Vikberg, Veli & Liston, Andrew D., 2009, Taxonomy and biology of European Heptamelini (Hymenoptera, Tenthredinidae, Selandriinae), Zootaxa 2112, pp. 1-24 : 3-4

Heptamelus Haliday, 1855

Melicerta Stephens, 1835: 94 –95. Preoccupied by Melicerta Schrank, 1803 (Rotifera) , and others. Type species by monotypy: Melicerta ochroleucus Stephens, 1835 .

Heptamelus Haliday, 1855: 60 –61, plate 2, fig. 1. As replacement name for Melicerta Stephens, 1835 . Caenoneura Thomson, 1870: 270 –271. Type species by monotypy: Caenoneura dahlbomi Thomson, 1870 . Coenoneura: Cameron, 1882a: 272, misspelling. As synonym of Heptamelus Haliday, 1855 .

36 Palaearctic and Oriental species. One species introduced and established in Nearctic.

Larvae are internal feeders, making long galleries in the petioles of ferns (de Meijere 1911, Shaw & Bailey 1991). Conde (1932: 15) ascribes two generations to Heptamelus ochroleucus (his illustration of the lancet and characterization in key indicate that this was really H. dahlbomi ), noting that the second generation was much rarer, but Enslin (1914), based apparently on de Meijere (1911), states that H. ochroleucus s. l. has a single generation. The emergence dates of H. dahlbomi reared by M. R. Shaw and dates of capture of adults studied by the authors indicate that both European species are probably at least partly bivoltine in most of Europe, with the possible exception of the far North (VV thinks that in Finland both species are univoltine). Flight period of H. dahlbomi in North America (as H. ochroleucus ; Smith & Barrows 1987; Smith 2003) fits a bivoltine pattern, with the majority of records attributable to the first generation. Whilst the flight periods of H. dahlbomi and H. ochroleucus overlap considerably, the latter is apparently more abundant later in the season. This difference is most noticeable in the Finnish data, and also fairly clear in records from Britain.