Pirates maculicrus Fairmaire, 1858

Liu, Yingqi, Pluot-Sigwalt, Dominique, Guilbert, Eric & Cai, Wanzhi, 2022, Catalogue of type specimens of Peiratinae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Reduviidae) preserved in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, Zootaxa 5110 (1), pp. 1-85 : 62

Pirates maculicrus Fairmaire, 1858

Original data: “ Gabon ” ( Fairmaire 1858: 309–310).

Type: Syntype 1 ♀: “ TYPE ” // “ MUSEUM PARIS GABON J. THOMSON 1883” // “2395 83” disc // “ Pirates maculicrus type n. sp. Fairm ” // “Type” ( Fig. 50 ) .

Type locality: Gabon .

Current status: Ectomocoris maculicrus ( Fairmaire, 1858) (combination proposed by Stål 1867: 256).

Remarks: L. Fairmaire and V.A. Signoret were in charge of the descriptions of the Hemiptera collected in Gabon by H. Deyrolle in 1856 and 1857 sponsored by G.V. Mniszech and J. Thomson (the history of the trip is described in the same volume). The original description of Pirates maculicrus is most succinct: it does not indicate neither the number of studied specimens, nor the sex, and there is no mention of type. Although the type locality was not provided specifically for this particular species, as the entire work treats species from Gabon, it is evidently Gabon. A single specimen found in the MNHN bears a disc label with the numbers “2395” and “83” which proves that the specimen is a syntype of P. maculicrus . In the MNHN old register of the year [18]83, we can read, p. 84 (for the numbers 1919 to 2491): “ Insectes Myriapodes, Orthoptères, Névroptères, Hémiptères, Lépidoptères et Diptères provenant du Gabon donnés au Muséum de Paris, par Mr J. Thomson ”; and, in front of the number “2395”: “ Pirates maculicrus Fairm. 1 ” [i.e., one specimen].Although Villiers (1968a: 420) listed “type au Museum de Paris”, he gave similar statements for all species treated in his paper with no regard to the composition of their actual type material, therefore this statement can hardly be considered as an “assumption that the species-group taxon was based upon a single type specimen” in the sense of ICZN (1999, Art. 74.6). As we do not know if there were other specimens deposited in other collections, we treat the MNHN specimen as a syntype ( ICZN 1999, Recommendation 73F).

Figures

FIGURE 50. Syntype ♀ of Pirates maculicrus Fairmaire, 1858. Scale bar: 5 mm.