Xanthogramma pruthii, DEORAS, 1942

Mengual, Ximo, 2012, The flower fly genus Citrogramma Vockeroth (Diptera: Syrphidae): illustrated revision with descriptions of new species, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 164 (1), pp. 99-172 : 106

XANTHOGRAMMA PRUTHII DEORAS, 1942

Deoras (1943) described a new species of Xanthogramma from the Delhi area ( India), named X. pruthii . This species was reared from eggs found amongst groups of Myzus persicae (Sulzer, 1776) and adults have terga 2 to 4 each with two lateral curved yellow maculae. This species was mentioned again from New Delhi and adjoining areas by Anand, Rai & Sharma (1967) and Anand (1986). They also reported another species of this genus, as Xanthogramma sp. , feeding on Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach, 1843) and Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris, 1776) ( Hemiptera , Aphididae ). Deoras also related his new species to C. citrinum , at that time the only ‘ Xanthogramma ’ species described from India. Ghorpadé (unpubl. data) examined the type material at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute ( IARI, New Delhi) and found it to be Scaeva latimaculata ( Brunetti, 1923) .

Similarly, other such mistaken identities were published for ‘ Xanthogramma sp. ’ by Rao (1969), Gokulpure (1972), Habib (1973), Rai (1976), Das & Raychaudhuri (1983), Agarwala, Dutta & Raychaudhuri (1983), Agarwala, Láska & Raychaudhuri (1984), Anand (1986), and Aslamkhan, Safdar & Azizullah (1997) from central and northern India, and Pakistan, which are probably misidentifications for either S. latimaculata or Allograpta javana (Wiedemann, 1824) (K. Ghorpadé pers. comm.).