Pyrrhocoris rottensis, Kment, 2021

Kment, Petr, 2021, A review of the fossil taxa originally assigned to Pyrrhocoridae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera), Zootaxa 5081 (4), pp. 579-586 : 582

‘Pyrrhocoris’ rottensis nom. nov.

( Figs 1–4 )

Pyrrhocoris? tibialis Statz & Wagner, 1950: 118–119 , pl. XXVII: fig. 44 (original description, photograph). Holotype: male (part and counterpart), Germany, Rott-am-Siebengebirge; Upper Oligocene: Chattian (24–23 Ma) (coll. Statz, deposited in the Invertebrate Paleontology collections of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (LACMIP), USA, type number: LACMIP Type 3257, catalog number: LACMIP 2533.943) (see Hendy et al. 2020).

Pyrrhocoris tibialis: Sudakaran et al. (2015) : 2589, 2592 (calibration of phylogenetic analysis).

Nomenclature. Pyrrhocoris tibialis Statz & Wagner, 1950 is a junior primary homonym of Pyrrhocoris tibialis Stål, 1874 . According to ICZN (1999: Art. 57.2, 60.3) the junior primary homonym is permanently invalid and must be replaced by its junior synonym or new substitute name. As Pyrrhocoris tibialis Statz & Wagner has no available junior synonym, I propose here Pyrrhocoris rottensis nom. nov. as the new substitute name.

Etymology. The species name is a latinized adjective rottensis (- is, - e) referring to the type locality of the species.

Comments. Statz & Wagner (1950) included their new taxon in the genus Pyrrhocoris Fallén, 1814 with a question mark, indicating a tentative or doubtful placement. In their description they wrote: ‘Ocellen anscheinend vorhanden. [= Ocelli apparently present.]’ The examination of the available photographs ( Fig. 1 ) seems to confirm their observation (see Fig. 3 : o). Statz & Wagner (1950) commented their placement of this fossil as follows: ‘The body shape of this fossil bug in combination with some of its characters speaks for its affiliation with the family Pyrrhocoridae . The genital segment is reminiscent to Pyrrhocoris apterus (L[innaeus, 1758)], which also has very similar proportions of antennomeres. But the fossil animal has probably ocelli present, which makes this assumption uncertain.’ As lack of the ocelli is one of the basic diagnostic characters of Pyrrhocoroidea (cf. Schuh & Slater 1995, Schuh & Weirauch 2020), their presence excludes ‘ Pyrrhocoris ’ rottensis from this superfamily. Contrary to the opinion of Statz & Wagner (1950), the shape of the antennomeres with scape (I) stout and much shorter than pedicel (II) (see Fig. 4 : I and II) is rather corresponding to the situation in many representatives of Lygaeoidea (see e.g., Péricart 1999a, b, c; Baranowski & Slater 2005; Henry et al. 2015; Gao & Zhou 2021) rather than in Pyrrhocoridae which have a scape slender and longer or subequal to the pedicel (see Fig. 5 ; Stehlík 1965, 2006; Stehlík & Jindra 2008; Schaefer & Stehlík 2013). Unfortunately, other important characters diagnostic for Pyrrhocoroidea and Lygaeoidea, such as the structure of metathoracic scent gland peritreme and pregenital abdomen as well as the positions of abdominal spiracles and trichobothria (cf. Kment et al. 2019; Hemala et al. 2020, 2021) cannot be observed in the present fossil which makes its precise placement impossible. For these reasons, I classify here ‘ Pyrrhocoris’ rottensis as Lygaeoidea incertae sedis.

Figures

FIGURES 1–4. Pyrrhocoris rottensis nom. nov. (= P. tibialis Statz & Wagner, 1950), holotype male: 1–2—habitus (1—dorsal view, 2—ventral view); 3—detail of head, dorsal view; 4—detail of antennae, ventral view. Abbreviations: e—compound eye; o—ocellus; I–IV—antennomeres I to IV. (Orig. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County: LACMIP 2533.943, LACMIP Type 3257).

FIGURES 5–10. Pyrrhocoris sibiricus Kuschakewitsch, 1866 (f. tibialis Stål, 1874), male from China: Tianjin: Nankai University Campus, body length 8.53 mm. 5—dorsal habitus; 6–7—genital capsule (6—dorsal view, magnification 47×; 7—lateral view, 60×); 8–9—aedeagus (8—dorsal view, 9—lateral view); 10—paramere. Scale bars: 6–7—0.5 mm; 8–10—not to scale. Photo: P. Kment.