Chrysis therates Mocsary , 1889

Rosa, Paolo, Wisniowski, Bogdan & Xu, Zai-fu, 2015, Annotated type catalogue of the Chrysididae (Insecta, Hymenoptera) deposited in the collection of Radoszkowski in the Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, ZooKeys 486, pp. 1-100 : 53-55

Taxon classification Animalia Hymenoptera Chrysididae

Chrysis therates Mocsary, 1889 Plate 45

Chrysis (Hexachrysis) therates Mocsáry 1889: 555.

Type locality.

"Senegalia (Coll. Rad.)".

Holotype

♀ [box 62]: golden rounded label // Senegal. [printed] [green label] // 134 [printed] // modica [handwritten by Radoszkowski] // therates Moc [handwritten by Radoszkowski].

Remarks.

Kimsey and Bohart (1991: 438) synonymised Chrysis therates with Chrysis mediocris Dahlbom, 1845 without type examination. Chrysis therates is cleary separated from Chrysis mediocris even though it belongs to the Chrysis smaragdula group. The type perfectly matches Mocsáry’s description, but this specimen seems to be collected in another biogeographical region. Shape and colour pattern are typical of the Oriental Region. We identify this species as Chrysis principalis Smith. We did not examined the type of Chrysis principalis yet, however this specimen matches all the specimens of Chrysis principalis observed in different collections, including those in Linsenmaier’s collection, who examined Smith types (pers. comm. based on unpublished manuscripts found in NML). Very likely, Mocsáry described Chrysis therates as a new species because bearing the label “Senegal”, and no other African species shares similar characteristics. The locality label of Chrysis therates could be in error or this specimen could be accidentally introduced into Senegal by commerce. In fact, Senegal was on the commercial way from South Asia to Europe, and the specimen could be present on any ship along this route. Therefore, we propose the new synonym: Chrysis therates Mocsáry, 1889 = Chrysis principalis Smith, 1874.

Current status.

Chrysis principalis Smith, 1874.