Vespa magnifica

Kojima, Jun-Ichi, Saito, Fuki & Nguyen, Lien Thi Phuong, 2011, On the species-group taxa of Taiwanese social wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) described and / or treated by J. Sonan, Zootaxa 2920, pp. 42-64 : 55

Vespa magnifica var. nobilis Sonan 1929 [ Vespa mandarinia Smith 1852 ]

Type material. Sonan (1929: 140) described this nominal taxon with the designation of the queen with the collection data “Musha, 4.VI.1927 (Coll. J. Sonan)” as the HOLOTYPE, which is in TARI and has labels of “Musha / 4-VI-1927 / Col. J. Sonan” and “ Vespa mandarinia / F. Smith / Det. Starr, 1990”. He listed the following specimens designated as PARATYPES (the specimens we have successfully located in TARI are given in brackets with the label data): 1 worker, Arisan, 19.VI.1914 (Coll. M. Maki) [1 queen, “ IV 1914 / Arisan / Col. M. Kato”; this specimen might not be a paratype]; 1 queen, Horisha, V–VIII.1918 (Cool. M. Kawamura) [1 worker (queen?), “ Formosa / Horisha, -18, / V–VIII. / H. Kawamura”]; 1 worker, Horisha, 20.V.1908 (Coll. I. Nitobe); 2 queens, Musha, 18.V.1919 (T. Okuni, J. Sonan, K. Miyake, M. Yoshino) [1 queen, “ Formosa / Musha 1919 / V.18–VI.15 / T. Okuni, J. Sonan, / K. Miy., M. Yosh.”]; 2 queens, no locality given, 26.V.1927 (Coll. K. Fukuda) [1 queen, “Musha / 26.V.1927 / Col. K Fukuda”]; 2 queens, Namakaban, 19.IX.1924 (Coll. T. Shiraki, J. Sonan) [1 worker (queen?), “Namakaban / 19.IX.1924 /T. Shiraki / J. Sonan”]; 1 queen, Rakuraku, 11.IX.1924 (Coll. T. Shiraki, J. Sonan) [1 worker (queen?), “Rakurku / 11.IX.1924 / T. Shiraki / J. Sonan”]; 1 worker, Rimogan, 8.XI.1928 (Coll. J. Sonan) [1 worker, “RIMOGAN / 8-XI-1928 / Col. J. Sonan”]; 2 workers, Tompo, 10.IV.1924 (T. Shiraki, J. Sonan) [2 workers, “Tompo / 10.IV.1924 / T. Shiraki / J. Sonan”].

Van der Vecht (1959: 220) treated this nominal taxon as a subspecies of V. mandarinia , and Archer (1995) proposed to replace “ nobilis ” as the name of a subspecies of V. mandarinia with the informal color form name “Taiwanese”. By listing “ Vespa magnifica Smith var. nobilis Sonan, 1929 ” in the synonym list of V. mandarinia, Starr (1992) has synonymized it under V. mandarinia ; judging from the labels attached to the holotype, C. Starr examined the holotype before the manuscript of his article ( Starr 1992) was prepared.