Bombylius phaeopterus Bezzi, 1924

Greathead, David J. & Evenhuis, Neal L., 2004, New species of Bombylioidea in Mario Bezzi’s Unpublished Hungarian Museum Manuscript, Zootaxa 773, pp. 1-56 : 21

Bombylius phaeopterus Bezzi, 1924

( Fig. 11)

11. Bombylius modestus var. phaeopterus ɗɗΨΨ Eritrea: Assab, i–iii.1907 (Katona). MS page 6.

Bezzi, 1924: 46 – diagnosis; ɗ S. Abyssinia in BMNH.

Greathead, 1967: 210 – description of holotype [as B. phaeopteroides n. sp.; see Bowden (1975) for clarification of misidentification]; also recorded specimens from Yemen in BMNH.

Evenhuis & Greathead, 1999: 129 – listed (incorrectly) a holotype in BMNH.

Types: The syntypes in HNHM (of which there were an unknown number) were destroyed in 1956 leaving as the only surviving syntype the male from ‘S. Abyssinia’ in BMNH. This specimen is here designated lectotype ( Fig. 11).

Remarks: This is one of a group of similar species close to B. modestus Loew, 1873 that are found in southern Arabia and northeastern Africa. They are keyed, described, and the male genitalia illustrated in Greathead (1967); but note that nomenclatural errors owing to application of the name B. phaeopterus to a common Eritrean coastal species (renamed B. modestoides Bowden ) rather than the southern Ethiopian species designated in Bezzi (1924; syn. B. phaeopteroides Greathead ) were corrected by Bowden (1975).