Puto superbus (Leonardi)

Han, Sarah I., 2011, A study of the scale insect genera Puto Signoret (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha: Coccoidea: Putoidae) and Ceroputo Šulc (Pseudococcidae) with a comparison to Phenacoccus Cockerell (Pseudococcidae), Zootaxa 2802, pp. 1-22 : 13-14

Puto superbus (Leonardi)

Macrocerococcus superbus Leonardi, 1907: 152 .

Ceroputo volynicus Nasonov, 1908: 472 . Synonymy by Borchsenius, 1949: 296. Ceroputo superbus ; Lindinger, 1912: 65. Change of combination.

Phenacoccus seurati Vayssière, 1927: 109 . Synonymy by Balachowsky, 1953b: 304. Macrocerococcus tauricus Borchsenius, 1948: 33 . Synonymy by Danzig, 1999: 84. Macrocerococcus kiritshenkoi Borchsenius, 1949: 298 . Synonymy by Danzig, 1999: 84. Puto tauricus ; Tereznikova, 1975a: 240. Change of combination.

Puto superbus ; Tereznikova, 1975a: 241. Change of combination.

Macrocerococcus kiritzhenkoi ; Tang, 1992: 398. Misspelling of species name. Puto kiritshenkoi ; Ben-Dov, 1994: 424. Change of combination.

Puto superbus was described from Tempio, Sardinia, Italy, on unidentified species of grass ( Poaceae ) in 1907 by G. Leonardi. We have examined specimens from the type series that have identical data as the lectotype and also were mounted from dried specimens included in Chermotheca Italica ( Leonardi, 1909). We agree with the illustration of this species given by Marotta and Tranfaglia (1993). We also have examined a wingless adult male from Fürth, Germany, on grass and it possesses eight eyes in addition to the lateral ocelli and one pair of lateral filaments. There is a possibility that P. superbus encompasses more than one species. Marotta and Tranfaglia (1985) discussed the variation in the dorsal tubular ducts in the cerarii but later ( Marotta & Tranfaglia, 1993) determined that P. superbus lacked dorsal ducts entirely. Specimens with these ducts were identified as P. tauricus . Danzig (1999) again placed P. tauricus as a junior subjective synonym of P. superbus . A careful analysis of all species in the genus is required to sort out their true identity. For this paper we have studied types of the junior synonyms Puto kiritshenkoi (Borchsenius) , Puto tauricus (Borchsenius) and Phenacoccus seurati Vayssière but had insufficient series of specimens to come to definitive conclusions about synonyms.