Apotropina bispinosa (Becker, 1911)

Ang, Yuchen, Lumbers, James & Riccardi, Paula R., 2023, A conspectus of Australian Apotropina (Diptera, Chloropidae) with the description of two new species, ZooKeys 1187, pp. 261-299 : 261

publication ID	https://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1187.108497
publication LSID	lsid:zoobank.org:pub:919C320F-AA72-4F1D-9028-1ECB12948B8D
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/F289F676-3AE8-51FF-A498-7D5E2AFBC763
treatment provided by	ZooKeys by Pensoft
scientific name	Apotropina bispinosa (Becker, 1911)
status

Treatment

Fig. 24A-C View Figure 24

Oscinella bispinosa Becker, 1911: 152.

Oscinelloides bispinosa : Malloch 1940: 268.

Type locality and distribution.

Australia: Queensland (Weipa). PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Huon (Sattleberg), New Britian (Rabaul).

Taxonomic notes.

This species has a problematic type series assignment. It was originally described from, and limited to, Papua New Guinea based on six specimens ( Becker 1911). Malloch (1940) identified an additional female of Apotropina bispinosa from Papua New Guinea and transferred this species to his newly erected genus Oscinelloides Malloch, providing further morphological description of the species. Oscinelloides was subsequently synonymized with Apotropina ( Sabrosky 1989). Thereafter, specimens from Australia were identified to the A. bispinosa (Forster, 1992). We were able to examine two specimens in MfN marked as types (see Fig. 24 View Figure 24 for one imaged specimen; label transcription: "Sattleberg, Huon-Golf.; 547474; Typus; N.-Guinea, Biró 1899.; Sammlung Dr. Th. Becker; Rhodesiella sp., det J.W. Ismay 2002; http://coll.mfn-berlin.de/u/5c8582") and found that both specimens have no dorsocentral setae except for the posterior one and have completely dark brown femora and tibiae. These features do not correspond to descriptions provided by Becker (1911) and Malloch (1940), where both state that A. bispinosa has two strong pairs of dorsocentral setae, lighter-colored yellowish legs with darkened apices on mid and hind femora as well as fore tibiae. In fact, the morphology of the examined specimens matches that of genus Rhodesiella Adams. Given that the two MfN specimens [547474 (5c8582 and 5c85bb)] do not correspond to the original description (see Suppl. material 1) despite belonging to the same locality, a detailed assessment on A. bispinosa 's type series should be done. With that, the designation of a lectotype would clarify this species identity. Furthermore, as we could not examine Forster’s (1992) Australian specimens, we refrain from adding A. bispinosa to the key.