Mallophora semiviolacea Rondani, 1848

Sforzi, Alessandra & Sommaggio, Daniele, 2021, Catalog of the Diptera types described by Camillo Rondani, Zootaxa 4989 (1), pp. 1-438 : 58

Mallophora semiviolacea Rondani, 1848

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: 1848b: 92.

TYPE LOCALITY: “ Brasile [ Brazil]” ( Rondani 1848b: 63); [Belem (Pará), Brazil] ( Papavero 1973: 343). See Remarks.

TYPE MATERIAL: 1 ♀, syntype (partially eaten by dermestids) ( MZUN: Box Asilidei A 05, 03): Mallophora semiviolacea Rnd. , Brasile / M. Zool. N° 11052 .

CURRENT STATUS: valid species ( Martin & Papavero 1970: 76); junior synonym of Mallophora barbipes (Wiedemann, 1819) ( Artigas & Angulo 1980: 40, Papavero 2009: 37).

REMARKS: Rondani (1848b: 92) described Mallophora semiviolacea , without specifying either the number or the sex of the specimens, but giving a single measurement of length, from material collected in South America by V. Ghiliani and received from G. Mussino. In his description of Mallophora cilicrura, Rondani (1851: 368) reported: “ proxima subviolaceae Rndn., cum qua facillime confundenda [similar to subviolaceae Rndn, with whom it is easily confused]”, presumably referring to the species Mallophora semiviolacea . Costa (1866: 36) listed a single MZUN specimen numbered “803”. Artigas & Angulo (1980: 40, 77) incorrectly concluded that the type specimen had been lost and consider Mallophora subviolacea as an “unjustified emendation of Mallophora semiviolacea ”. We found one syntype in this study. O’Hara et al. (2011: 214) incorrectly reported this nominal species as “ semivolacea”. Although Rondani (1848b: 63) only gave the type locality as “ Brasile ”, Papavero (1973: 343) gave a more accurate type locality based on a note in Spinola (1853) that said all specimens collected by Ghiliani in 1846 were collected in Belem, Pará, Brazil.