Pantostomus gibbiventris Bezzi, 1921

Greathead, David J. & Evenhuis, Neal L., 2004, New species of Bombylioidea in Mario Bezzi’s Unpublished Hungarian Museum Manuscript, Zootaxa 773, pp. 1-56 : 26-27

Pantostomus gibbiventris Bezzi, 1921

( Fig. 13)

43 Pantostomus gibbiventris 1ɗ1Ψ South Africa (Eastern Cape): Willowmore, 20.xi.1906 (H. Brauns). MS page 55.

Bezzi, 1921b: 474 – diagnosis based on ‘some specimens from Willowmore (Cape), December and January, Dr H. Brauns’ to be fully described in his forthcoming paper on the Hungarian Museum material.

Bezzi, 1922: 79 – diagnosis based on ‘exemplaria aliqua ex Willowmore, Octob.–Febr., in Museo Budapestini et in collectione mea’. MSNM has one female syntype from Willowmore 20.xi.1906 (Dr Brauns). The Brauns collection in NMSA has 4ΨΨ collected on 15.xii.1917. One of these bears Bezzi’s determination label and another a Brauns determination label. The syntypes in HNHM and MSNM were all collected on the same date in 1906; therefore it is uncertain that these NMSA specimens should be considered as syntypes although Bezzi had seen at least one of them.

Hesse, 1956: 56 – described from topotypic specimens from Brauns’s collection and other specimens in BMNH, TMSA & SAMC (no details of label data).

Evenhuis & Greathead, 1999: 286 – listed an undetermined number of syntypes in SAMC, one syntype in DEI, and one syntype in ZMHB.

Types: The two syntypes in HNHM listed in Bezzi’s manuscript were destroyed in 1956. Bezzi (1922) indicated that some specimens existed in HNHM and his own collection. Only the female syntype in MSNM survives. Hesse (1956) stated that a male specimen in Brauns’s collection bears a red label ‘Bez. 1’, which Hesse considered was proof that it was one of the same batch sent to Bezzi. This does not prove that Bezzi had seen the specimen and is equivocal (see also discussion under P. fucatus concerning another label ‘38 Bezzi’). This casts doubt on the statement in Evenhuis & Greathead (1999) that syntypes are to be found in SAMC, DEI and ZMHB. We therefore here designate the female in MSNM as lectotype ( Fig. 13).

Remarks: Hesse (1956) provided a full description of this species and described other new species in the genus.