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Hedychridium valesiense = Hedychridium rossicum

PostPosted: 15 Jan 2018 23:06
by Euchroeus
Dear friends,

here another interesting nomenclatorial case.

Linsenmaier (1959) described H. valesiense based on specimens collected in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

In 1965 Linsenmaier received from Nikol’skaya one paratype of Hedychridium rossicum Semenov, which he identified as H. valesiense and considered this taxon never described. Indeed, he pinned under this specimen a label “rossicum wurde nicht publiziert” [= rossicum was not published]. Arens (2010) also examined this paratype and confirmed the identification.

Nevertheless, Hedychridium rossicum was really described, and has priority on H. valesiense.
During on our research on the Russian Chrysididae, we found the description of the latter in the keys of the Russian Insects (1948) - Hymenoptera section. Gussakovskij is the author of the key and therefore the author of H. rossicum.
Semenov-Tian-Shanskij never described H. rossicum (Rosa et al. 2017), but labelled some specimens in his collection as types of H. rossicum, which should have been considered as nomen in collection, as in many other cases (Rosa et al., 2017). Very likely Gussakovskij considered this species already described and Semenov its author. This interpretation was later followed by Plavil'shchikov (1950), Levi et al. (1974) and Blagoveschenskaya (1990, 1994) who listed H. rossicum Semenov as a valid species for the Russian Provinces of Kirov and Ulyanovsk. Nikol'skaya (1978) synonymized H. rossicum with H. valesiense, without respect of the Principle of Priority of the ICZN.
Interestingly, all authors (Gussakovskij, Nikoskaya, Plavil'shchikov, Levi et al. and Blagoveschenskaya) did not provide the year of description of H. rossicum, which remained unknown till today.

Here the short note.