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Prosmittia

Started by Martin Spies, April 18, 2014, 12:10:15 PM

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Martin Spies

For reasons of content consistency, the first nine posts in this topic have been moved here from the "Recently published" board, "Orthocladiinae - new taxa" topic.

bruno.rossaro@unimi.it

I received by the author a manuscript in Russian describing a species very near (possibly identical) with Pseudosmittia fabioi:
it is Prosmittia verae published in Causasian Entomological Bullettin 2008 4(3).

Martin Spies

#2
The paper Bruno refers to is:

Krasheninnikov, A.B., Makarchenko, E.A. (2008)
Prosmittia verae sp. n. - novyi vid komarov-zvontsov (Diptera: Chironomidae: Orthocladiinae) iz okrestnostei Sochi (Severnyi Kavkaz). [Prosmittia verae sp. n. - a new chironomid species (Diptera: Chironomidae: Orthocladiinae) from the environs of Sochi Town (the Northern Caucasus).]  Kavkaz. Ent. Byul. 4: 359-361.

So far, the species does not appear in Fauna Europaea (FE; http://www.faunaeur.org/), as the geographical scope of this database excludes the region around Sochi from which P. verae was described. The description by Boggero et al. (2014) will merit an entry in FE, if and when an opportunity arises to update the latter. Whether the valid name to appear in FE will be P. verae or P. fabioi depends on evaluation of the possible synonymy.

@Bruno:
Now that you have seen the earlier paper, could you please comment on genus placement - shall it be Prosmittia or Pseudosmittia ?

bross

Wing costa does not appear prolonged beyond R4+5 and achrosticals are absent in P. fabioi (see the open access paper in www.jear.it);
the former character does not allow to assign to Prosmittia, but the absence of achrosticals should favour Prosmittia ...

Martin Spies

#4
OK, that might indicate at least one difference from Prosmittia verae, as the published description of the wing in the latter species translates to:

Wings. Wing length 1.7-2.0 mm. VR 1.43 (n = 1). Costal vein extends beyond the tip of R4+5 by 50 microns. All veins without setae. Tip of R4+5 much more distal than tip of M3+4. Cu1 sinuous. Anal lobe reduced. Alula and squama bare.

Martin Spies

On the other hand, the claim in Boggero et al. (2014) of an "R4+5 proximal with respect to M3+4" in P. fabioi is proven wrong by the photograph of the wing published right next to that text statement. Therefore, with R4+5 ending far distal to M3+4, the specimens from Sardinia clearly run to Prosmittia on p. 183, key couplet 184, in

Sæther, O.A., Ashe, P., Murray, D.E. (2000)
Family Chironomidae.  Pp. 113-334 in: Papp, L., Darvas, B. (eds): Contributions to a Manual of Palaearctic Diptera (with special reference to the flies of economic importance); Appendix volume.  Science Herald, Budapest.

bross

R4+5 is distal respect to m3+4 (proximal respect to m1+2, in the manuscript there is an error in description, reviewers did not see !) and this allows to confirm that P. fabioi is a Prosmittia, despite the fact that costa is not extended beyond R4+5,
it should be of interest to see in P. verae the costa extension

bross

In the paper about Pseusosmittia fabioi in www.jear.it  in the wing description the statement R4+5 "proximal" respect to m3+4 is now corrected with "distal"

Martin Spies

Please excuse the curiosity, Bruno, but:

How is it possible to change such content in a paper after the fact of its - supposedly unchangeable - publication?

And if such alterations are possible - theoretically even multiple times - what changes will be next? E.g., why not change the species name and genus placement if the original proposals are found to be suboptimal?

And how, then, would we determine the relevant date of publication of any such work, the content of which has been modified?

bross

The limit for changes is the cartaceous publication;
I was able to change the term before the cartaceous publication was ready, and more extended changes were in any case not possible.
The date of publication should be the one of the online publication for the DOI number, the one of cartaceous printing will be April 2014 without a day,
I suppose 1 April.

bruno.rossaro@unimi.it

#10
somebody knows if there is a description of the  female of Prosmittia?
in Pseudosmittia fabioi the female is described and she has 6 antennal segments (Fig. 8 Jear 2014;46:1892, doi: 10.4081/jear.2014.1892)
Pseudosmittia is described with 5 segments (Ferrington & Sæther, 2011); so is this the first description of Prosmittia female ?

Martin Spies

Sæther & Ferrington (1993: 258 in J. Kansas Ent. Soc. 66/3) wrote: "Female, pupa and larva unknown."
Andersen et al. (2013: 250 in Insect Syst. Evol. Suppl. 66) reiterated this for the immature stages.

I am unaware of any published description of an adult female placed in Prosmittia, and the ZSM collection doesn't have any such specimen either.

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