Rhamphus pulicarius Caldara & Tosevski

Rhamphus pulicarius (Herbst, 1795)

Curculio pulicarius Herbst, 1795: 429.

This taxon was described from specimens collected at Braunschweig (Lower Saxony, Germany) from Hellwig’s collection, which was later combined with the collection of Hoffmannsegg and bought by the ZMHB (Klug 1824, Jaeger & Uhlig 2010). The material of the “Hellwig-Hoffmannsegg collection” is preserved in the so-called Historical Collection (Hist.-Coll.), the old main collection of the ZMHB, which also includes material of various other authors who worked before 1860. According to Müller et al. (2001) a particular problem in this collection is that in the past, curators and collection assistants have arranged all specimens, including types of various authors or from various collections into a single historical series, if they considered them to belong to the same species (or synonyms thereof). In these cases, the series label, or the label on the first specimen of a historical series, bears handwritten names of two or more species and authors. Consequently, it is often difficult to say which specimens should be associated with which name because original labels of material from different sources/authors either did not exist or were removed during early arrangement of the Historical Collection. Sometimes, the single specimen of material from another collection/author bears a very small locality or name label. However, often only the different method of mounting indicates that the specimen is indeed from another author or from another collection. Therefore, it is often difficult to locate specimen(s) of a particular author within a historical series of a species.

In the case of Rhamphus pulicarius there is the following series (B. Jaeger, pers. comm.):

Series no 54461: according to the catalogue of the historical collection (Fig. 1A) written by J.P.E.F. Stein (see Göllner-Scheiding 2007), this series originally comprised eight specimens from “German., Erichs.” [Germany, Erichson]. In the collection, B. Jaeger located seven specimens, and one pin without the specimen. According to the series label it includes specimens of “ flavicornis Clairv. Latr., Curc. salt. pulicarius Ht *” from “Brunsv., Hellw. [Brunsvigia = Braunschweig, Hellwig]” (Fig. 1C). We guess that a part of the series is actually from Braunschweig from the former Hellwig’s collection and the other part comprises specimens from Erichson.

It is noteworthy that, besides these specimens, there is also a microscope slide (Fig. 1F) including elytra and abdomen of one specimen. This slide was prepared by E. M. Hering when he published his note about R. oxyacanthae and compared it with R. pulicarius and R. subaeneus (Hering 1921).According to the label on the slide, the embedded body parts are not from a type but from a specimen collected later from Güntersberg by Hering.

Moreover, at the ZMHB there is an old catalogue of the collection of Hellwig and Illiger, which was handwritten by Illiger. In the Curculionidae section there is only one record which might refer to pulicarius (Fig. 1B). If it does indeed refer to Rhamphus pulicarius Herbst, there were originally two specimens of this species in the Hellwig collection, which were later integrated with Erichson specimens, and probably also with specimens from other sources. Therefore, the collection label of the series 54461, which includes the name “ pulicarius Ht *”, indicates that it should include Herbst’s/Hellwig’s specimen(s) because of the asterisk following “Ht”. However, it is not clear which of the eight specimens are from the Hellwig collection and which from Erichson or from other sources. We think that there is a high probability that at least the first specimen bearing the above-mentioned label is from Braunschweig and therefore a syntype but, unfortunately, we have no certainty. A complete lack of labels makes it virtually impossible to establish which of these specimens belongs to the type series. Therefore, under the qualifying conditions enunciated in Article 75.3 of the ICZN (1999) with the express purpose to clarifying its taxonomic status, following the authors’ general opinion on this taxon, we decided to designate a neotype of Curculio pulicarius Herbst, 1795, choosing the available specimen collected near to the type locality. It is a male (with the penis protruding from the abdomen), already sequenced, labelled “Assoc.w/ZFMK-TIS-2550709, Germany, 157 m NN, Halberstadt, Lkr. Harz, 51,84943N / 11,049566E, Sachsen-Anhalt, Freigelände südl. Klussiedlung [pink printed]/ Rhamphus pulicarius (Hbst., 1795) det. Jung, Manfred [pink printed]/ NEOTYPE Curculio pulicarius Herbst, 1795, Caldara & Toševski des. 2021 [red printed]/ Rhamphus pulicarius (Herbst, 1795) Caldara & Toševski det. 2021”. This specimen (Fig. 2A) is 1.8 mm long (rostrum excluded) and well preserved. Its online acc. Number is KU909870 (NCBI database, with photo taken when it was not yet glued on a card). It is deposited at the ZFMK. In accordance with Article 76.3 of the ICZN (1999) the place of origin of the neotype becomes the type locality of this taxon.