Holopyga buyssoni Mercet, 1902

Boustani, Mira & Rosa, Paolo, 2022, Survey of cuckoo wasps of Lebanon (Hymenoptera: Chrysididae) with description of four new species, Zootaxa 5104 (1), pp. 1-39 : 7-8

Holopyga buyssoni Mercet, 1902 stat. nov. *

Holopyga fervida var. buyssoni Mercet, 1902: 221 . Syntypes ♀ [not holotype]; Turkey: Ýskenderun [= Syria: Alexandretta] (MCNM).

Material examined. Beirut, 19.v.1953, leg. G.A. Mavromoustakis, 2♂, det. W. Linsenmaier ( NMLU); Mount Lebanon: Damour, 8.iv.1965, 1♀, leg. J. Klapperich, det. W. Linsenmaier 1990 ( NMLU). All specimens identified as Holopyga fervida chloroidea Dahlbom .

Distribution. * Lebanon. Turkey, Syria, Cyprus, Palestine.

Remarks. Several sibling species are found under the name Holopyga fervida ( Fabricius, 1781) ( Linsenmaier 1999; Rosa & Pavesi 2020). Holopyga fervida buyssoni is one of the most distinct and easiest to identify by the large and coarse punctation of the metasoma, distinctly visible on the second half of tergum II. For this reason, we propose to erect it to species rank. Linsenmaier (1968) reported that some males may be hardly distinguishable from the typical form. However, these specimens actually belong to a distinct syntopic taxon.

Linsenmaier (1959, 1968) named this taxon as Holopyga fervida chloroidea ( Dahlbom, 1845) . However, Holopyga chloroidea (original combination Hedychrum chloroideum ) and Holopyga curvata ( Förster 1853) (original combination Hedychrum curvatum ) are the chromatic dimorphic males of the western European Holopyga fervida ( Rosa & Xu 2015) . He used the name chloroidea because one syntype of this taxon was collected in Turkey. To avoid future misidentifications, Rosa & Xu (2015) designated the lectotype of Holopyga chloroidea based on one male of Holopyga fervida collected in Austria and deposited in the Spinola collection (MRSN). The previous lectotype of Holopyga chloroidea designated by Kimsey (1986) was found to be invalid ( Rosa & Xu 2015).