Biodiversity Data Journal : Taxonomic paper
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Corresponding author: Hélcio R. Gil-Santana ([email protected])
Academic editor: Laurence Livermore
Received: 21 Apr 2015 | Accepted: 09 Jun 2015 | Published: 16 Jun 2015
© 2015 Hélcio R. Gil-Santana, Dimitri Forero.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Gil-Santana H, Forero D (2015) Aristathlus imperatorius Bergroth, a newly recognized synonym of Reduvius iopterus Perty, with the new combination Aristathlus iopterus (Perty, 1834) (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Harpactorinae) . Biodiversity Data Journal 3: e5152. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.3.e5152
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Reduvius iopterus
Based on the original description and illustration of Reduvius iopterus, Aristathlus imperatorius is considered to be its junior synonym, with the resulting new combination: Aristathlus iopterus (
Heteroptera, Harpactorini, Neotropical Region, new combination, new synonym
Upon description by
While
Aristathlus imperatorius, originally described from French Guiana, has been recorded from Brazil (states of Amazonas, Pará, and Mato Grosso) (
Reduvius iopterus Perty, 1834 was described from the region of the Rio Negro (a river in the Amazon region of Brazil), and its original description was accompanied by a dorsal habitus drawing (
Dorsal habitus of Reduvius iopterus as illustrated by
The type specimen of Reduvius iopterus ought to be deposited at the Zoological Collection in Munich, as are many of Perty's type specimens, but it is now considered lost (
The depository institutions of the studied material are the following: American Museum of Natural History, New York (AMNH), Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia (ICN), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (MNRJ).
Reduvius iopterus Perty, 1834:
Aristathlus imperatorius Bergroth, 1913:
Given that Perty’s type specimen is lost, we base our conclusions on Perty's original description and illustration of R. iopterus (
Dorsal habitus of Aristathlus iopterus (
Both
There is no doubt that a synonymic proposal would be better based on the examination of the type specimens of the taxa involved. However, the identities of the known species in Aristathlus are not in dispute, even though Bergroth’s type specimens for both species have not been located and may be lost (
Neotype designations have to be done carefully (
The taxonomic revision was carried out by accurately examining the differences between male gentalia of the two species involved. These differences are congruent with the color patterns exhibited by each of the species. Therefore, color pattern is an accurate way of identifying species in Aristathlus even when no other morphological data are available, which is the situation faced here. As far as we are aware, there are no species of Neotropical Harpactorini that could be confused with R. iopterus or A. imperatorius, based either on the coloration pattern or on the body and leg structure. Reduvius iopterus cannot be confused with the other species of Aristathlus, A. regalis, since it is easily distinguished from R. iopterus or A. imperatorius by its conspicuous yellow markings, including a transverse yellow band on the corium (
Even though we have not examined the type specimens for these two species, the original descriptions (
It is also noteworthy that both taxa were recorded from the Amazon region, in which there is no other species known to us with the same general coloration and body structure, which reinforces the present synonymy. The superficial resemblance of Aristathlus to Zelus in the elongated body, as suggested by
Finally, in accordance with Article 67 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (
We thank “Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin”, University of São Paulo (USP), which, in the person of Daniela Pires, kindly furnished a digital copy of the figure of Reduvius iopterus in Perty´s work.