Heterogenella dolini Berest, 1989

Jaschhof, Mathias, 2016, Taxonomic revision of some Micromyinae (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) described by Zoya L. Berest, Zootaxa 4097 (2), pp. 255-262 : 259

Heterogenella dolini Berest, 1989 —new junior synonym of Heterogenella cambrica (Edwards, 1938)

Berest’s (1989) description of H. dolini fails to present characters that would distinguish it from H. cambrica — the reason here to treat the two species as identical. Why Berest (1989) did not even reflect upon the similarity of H. dolini and H. cambrica becomes obvious from a later publication, in which she designated Edwards’s (1938a) Bryomyia cambrica as the type species of a discrete genus, Cervuatina ( Berest 1993) . The concept of Cervuatina rests upon the ejaculatory apodeme of the holotype specimen, which according to Berest is “well sclerotized, distally biramous, with the branches being dendritic” and thus “strongly different from analogous structures in other genera of the tribe [ Bryomyiini ]” ( Berest 1993). As described earlier ( Jaschhof 1998), I interpret the very same specimen differently. A biramous ejaculatory apodeme is not only found in B. cambrica but in all Bryomyiini , where it is rated as a synapomorphy. In the specimen in question, the loop-like posterior extensions of the apodeme are unusually sharply contoured ( Jaschhof 1998: fig. 85a), probably as a result of Edwards’s use of a contrast medium, which gives the “dendritic” impression described by Berest (1993). In other words, the generic concept of Cervuatina is based on an artificial structure misinterpreted as an evolutionary novelty (see Jaschhof 1998).