Chrysis iris Christ, 1791

Paukkunen, Juho, Rosa, Paolo, Soon, Villu, Johansson, Niklas & Ødegaard, Frode, 2014, Faunistic review of the cuckoo wasps of Fennoscandia, Denmark and the Baltic countries (Hymenoptera: Chrysididae), Zootaxa 3864 (1), pp. 1-67 : 35

46. Chrysis iris Christ, 1791

Chrysis iris Christ 1791: 405 . Type?; no locality (Mus.?). Valkeila 1962: 64, Erlandsson 1971: 90, Banaszak 1980: 27, Vikberg 1986b: 68, Doronin 1996: 18, Söderman & Vikberg 2003: 45, Soon 2004: 22, 46, Kalniņš et al. 2007: 142, Allearter.dk 2010, Cederberg et al. 2010: 353, Orlovskytė et al. 2010: 150, Paukkunen 2010: 538, Cederberg 2011, Sjödin 2011, Ranta 2012: 33, Rosa & Soon 2012, Dyntaxa 2013, Soon et al. 2014: 311.

Chrysis nitidula [nec Fabricius, 1775]: Dahlbom 1829: 11, Dahlbom 1831: 30, Zetterstedtt 1840: 434, Dahlbom 1854: 215, Thomson 1870: 107, Woldstedt 1875: 345, Mocsáry 1889: 349, Sahlberg 1910: 97, Aurivillius 1911: 12, Hellén 1920: 212, Bischoff 1925: 307, Trautmann 1927: 142, Trautmann 1930: 506, Jansson 1934: 287, Hellén 1935: 8, Balthasar 1954: 196, Noskiewicz & Pulawski 1958: 44, Tumšs & Maršakovs 1970: 92, Kalniņš et al. 2007: 142.

Chrysis soluta Dahlbom 1854: 217 . Holotype ♂; Sweden (ZMUL) (examined). Buysson 1893: 235.

Chrysogona soluta: Mocsáry 1889: 184 , Aurivillius 1911: 8.

Tetrachrysis nitidula [nec Fabricius, 1775]: Jansson 1922: 37.

Chrysis purpurata [part., nec Fabricius, 1787]: Kimsey & Bohart 1991: 454, Budrys et al. 2004: 37.

Material examined. *Russian Fennoscandia: Ik: Metsäpirtti [= Zaporozhskoe], 29.VI.1938, 1 ♀ (E. Kangas); Ka: Antrea [= Kamennogorsk], 28.–29.VI.1925, 1 ♂ and 1 ♀ (E. Thuneberg); Kon: M. Gomselga, 5.VII.2012, 1 ♀ (A. Humala).

Distribution. Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, *Russian Fennoscandia.—Westpalearctic: central and northern Europe ( Linsenmaier 1997).

Remarks. The species has been found from all the Nordic and Baltic countries except Norway. The records from Norway of Balthasar (1954), Noskiewicz & Pulawski (1958) and Banaszak (1980) are probably erroneous. In Finland and Sweden, C. iris has declined significantly since the 1950s, and it is currently very rare. It has been classified as critically endangered in Finland ( Paukkunen 2010) and vulnerable in Sweden ( Cederberg et al. 2010). Chrysis soluta was described by Dahlbom (1854) as a separate species from C. nitidula (= C. iris ), based on one Swedish specimen. However, the specimen, which is preserved in ZMUL in Lund, represents an exceptionally small individual of C. iris , which has malformed venation in the forewings.