Limneria aliena Brischke, 1880

Galsworthy, Anthony, Shaw, Mark R. & Haraldseide, Håkon, 2023, A key to European species of Hyposoter Förster, 1869 (Ichneumonidae: Campopleginae) with descriptions of 18 new species, and notes on all included species, Zootaxa 5290 (1), pp. 1-73 : 7

Limneria aliena Brischke, 1880

Horstmann’s notes indicate that the type material of this species has been destroyed, as is the case with much of Brischke’s collection. It was described in Limneria from a single male, and Schmiedeknecht (1909) confirms that it was at that point still known only from the male. The original description is insufficient to show that it belongs to Hyposoter at all, but if it did, it could apply to more than one species. Aubert (1968a) transferred the taxon to Hyposoter , but this was on the basis of a female in his collection which he described as ‘femelle nouvelle’; although he stated that it conformed in all respects to Brischke’s description, he went on to state that as it lacked almost all red coloration on the metasoma (in contrast to Brischke’s description) it might be described as a new form ‘ nigrior ’. This is hardly a convincing attribution, and we regard alienus as a nomen dubium. There are five specimens in the Horstmann collection marked ‘ Hyposoter alienus’ by R.Bauer. One, which has been marked ‘? Olesicampe sp. ’ by Horstmann, belongs to the species similar to H. caedator and H. dubitatus referred to under H. caedator (q.v.) as a probable Olesicampe . The other four are specimens of H. castaneus sp. nov. described below. They do not match Brischke’s description of alienus . Hyposoter alienus is on the British checklist ( Broad, 2016) by virtue of a record in Ireland by Johnson (1929), who lists a single male in a faunistic list with no indication of the basis for the identification, and we suggest that the name should be removed from the checklist.