Platypygus bellus Loew
Creators: name: Gharali, Babak
name: Evenhuis, Neal L.
name: Almeida, Jorge
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2013
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Diptera
Bombyliidae
Platypygus
Platypygus bellus

description: Platypygus bellus Loew
(Figs. 3, 4)
Platypygus bellus Loew, 1869: 251. Loew, 1873: 206. Stein, 1881: 491. Becker, 1889: 377. Becker et al., 1903: 191. Kertész, 1909: 97. Verrall, 1909: 14. Bezzi, 1926: 260. Engel, 1933: 122. Paramonov, 1934: 19. Zaitzev, 1966: 139; 1969: 558; 1989: 45. Hull, 1973: 262. Evenhuis, 1983: 465; 2002: 25. Papp, 2003: 316; 2004: 137. Koçak & Kemal, 2009: 49.
Material examined. Types: RUSSIA: 1 male lectotype / Platypygus bellus Lw./ 9645/ Type / Sarepta Christ/ Platypygus bellus Lw. (ZMHB). Non-types: GREECE: 1 female, Rhodes, 3 km E. Eleousa, 26 May 1983, R. Danielsson (MZLU). RUSSIA: 1 male, 5 females, Orenberg Province, Verkhnedneprovka, left bank of the Ural River, 9 June 1934, L. Zimina (ZMHB).
Notes on types. Loew (1869) described Platypygus bellus based on an unknown number of specimens from Sarepta [= Krasnoarmeisk] near Volgograd, southern Russia collected by Christoph. Hugo Fedorovich Christoph (1831–1894) was born near Sarepta and became a teacher in Sarepta in 1858, so he probably collected the specimens in Loew’s type series some time between ca. 1858–1868. Two specimens under register no. 9645 (from “Sarepta, Christoph”) are logged into the ZMHB accession register from 1858–1884. Paramonov (1929: 222) listed only one specimen in ZMHB when he visited the museum in the autumn of 1928 to study the Loew types; and this specimen (a male) was located in ZMHB by Evenhuis (2002) when he visited there in 1998. This was the specimen that was examined during this study. Engel (1933) did not examine any specimens of P. bellus in ZMHB but listed 2 females from the von Röder collection in the Halle (Saale) Museum that were also collected in Sarepta (no further data). Through the kindness of Dr. Andreas Stark, he provided photographs of the two specimens as well as the labels and the handwriting on each label do not match Loew’s handwriting and the labels appear to be from a different collector. We therefore conclude here that these specimens do not represent a portion of the original syntypic series. However, the type status of P. bellus is fixed in Paramonov (1929: 222). By Paramonov stating “1 Exempl., No. 9645. Typus. Sarepta, Christoph. ”, this is enough according to the Article 74.5 of the I.C.Z.N. Code (I.C.Z.N., 1999) to fix the single specimen in ZMHB labeled as “ Type ” as the lectotype.
Diagnostic features. Lower part of face, oral margin and lower half of frons yellow; upper half of frons and occiput shiny black; antennae all black, located between oral margin and frontal ocellus; first antennal flagellomere as long as second flagellomere; proboscis length half head height; mesonotum (Fig. 3 c) minutely hairy, with large contiguous median black pattern; pattern extends to posterior margin of mesonotum medially with two yellowish to whitish areas admedianly; postpronotal lobes and postalar calli yellow; lateral margin of mesonotum yellow; black spot next to transverse suture coalesced with dorsal median pattern (Fig. 3 b); scutellum yellow, narrowly black basally (Fig. 3 c); halter stem and knob yellow; crossvein r-m before middle of cell dm (Fig. 3 a); legs completely yellow.
Male genitalia. In dorsal view epandrium semicircular, acutely narrowed apically, cerci subrectangular, not well sclerotized (Fig. 4 b), gonocoxites subtriangular, fused, brownish sclerotized; gonostyli fused to gonocoxites, without sclerotization apically (Fig. 4 d), paired membranous sclerites medially with sclerotization only at extreme apex; epiphallus subconical, tapering to thin straight tip, aedeagal bulb large, ovate; gonocoxal apodemes long, narrow, flared apically, length about 1.5 times length of axe-shaped basal aedeagal apodeme (Fig. 4 c); lateral apodemes small, foliate.
Zaitzev (1966) illustrated two parts of the male genitalia of Platypygus bellus: the gonocoxites were drawn ventrally and the phallic complex laterally. Zaitzev’s illustrations differ in many respects from ours, which is from verified identifications, and it could be that his illustration is based on a misidentified specimen. Each gonocoxite in Zaitzev’s figure is subconical with a pointed apex and the pair is fused narrowly by a median bridge. However his figures have a deeply cleft pair of gonocoxites, whereas ours are less deeply cleft. He figures two parallel and medially curved apodemes present in the middle of the gonocoxites that are bifurcate at the apex. We found no sclerites in the medial portion of the gonocoxites. The lateral view of the phallic complex is similar to our illustration (Fig. 4 e) except that the tip of the epiphallus is ragged (ours is truncate without a ragged edge). Finally, the axe-shaped basal aedeagal apodeme is less pronounced than in our specimen.
Female genitalia: Not dissected.
Distribution. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Greece (new record), Gruzia, Hungary, southern Russia, and Turkey. Papp’s (2003) record of this species from Hungary expanded its distribution for the first time into central Europe.
Remarks. The head of the lectotype is lost, so we added the head characters mentioned in Engel (1933) and from other available specimens. Given the known distribution of P. bellus and examination of numerous individuals, from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, we feel the record of P. bellus from Egypt in Zaitzev (1989) and followed by Evenhuis (2002) is doubtful. It was not listed in Efflatoun (1945), Steyskal & El Bialy (1967), or El Hawagry (2011), all of whom had access to numerous specimens from Egypt. We thus have deleted Egypt from the known range of P. bellus.
description: Published as part of Gharali, Babak, Evenhuis, Neal L. & Almeida, Jorge, 2013, World synopsis of described species of the genus Platypygus Loew (Diptera: Mythicomyiidae: Platypyginae), pp. 199-242 in Zootaxa 3745 (2) on pages 205-208, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3745.2.3, http://zenodo.org/record/248549