Conocephalus Thunberg, 1815

Braun, Holger, 2024, Nomenclatural notes on a variety of Orthoptera, Zootaxa 5453 (1), pp. 121-126 : 122

Conocephalus Thunberg, 1815

This cosmopolitan genus comprising more than 160 species is currently divided in ten subgenera, with most of the species belonging to the also cosmopolitan subgenus C. ( Anisoptera ) Latreille, 1829. For a long time also X iphidion Serville, 1831 was recognized as subgenus by many authors, and by a few authors still is, but its diagnosis is contradictory and in an important revision of the genus it is treated as a synonym of C. ( Anisoptera ) ( Pitkin 1980). This has been adopted by OSF ( Cigliano et al. 2024 and already in the old OSF). Due to this unclear taxonomic situation, part 7 of the catalog series OSF is originally based on, lists several generic synonyms under a wrong subgenus ( Otte 1997b, some corresponding citations needed to be removed in the new OSF to restore the probably correct synonymies). The following four names are here confirmed as synonyms of C. ( Anisoptera ):

Xiphidion Serville, 1831 , C. ( Neoxiphidion ) Karny,1912, C.( Thecoxiphidion ) Karny,1912, all three synonymized by Pitkin 1980 with Anisoptera .

Palotta Walker, 1869 and the only species P. inornata Walker, 1869 , whose holotype is a nymph, were treated as nomina dubia, although presumably belonging to genus Thyridorhoptrum Rehn & Hebard ( Pitkin 1977). Other authors, most recently Otte 1997b, treat the species as synonym of Conocephalus iris (Serville, 1938) , which belongs to subgenus C. ( Anisoptera ) ( Cigliano et al. 2024).