Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 96. (Budapest 2004)

Papp, J.: Type specimens of the braconid species by Gy. Szépligeti deposited in the Hungarian Natural History Museum (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

The braconid type material of SZEPLIGETI in the Hungarian Natural History Museums comprises (1) the species taken in the Carpatho-Pannonian Basin (in the "Collectio Hungáriáé") and (2) the species taken outside the historical Hungary, i.e. mainly in exotic countries (in the "Collectio orbis terrarum"). The latter braconid material was collected by Hungarian and foreign collectors or purchased from insect traders. The original descriptions of the braconid species were presented by SZEPLIGETI in his 34 papers published in 1896-1914. Their type material is deposited in the Hungarian Natural History Museum. His last 14 papers published in 1908-1922 also contain descriptions of new taxa. However, the overwhelming majority of their type material is housed in six European museums, i. e. Berlin, Leiden, Paris, Portici (Naples), Stockholm and Tervuren, and only a few duplicate type specimens were retained for the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Since the middle of the 1960s my entomological work was partly focused on the rearranging of SZEPLIGETI'

s braconid collection. First I divided it into two parts following the practice of the Hungarian Natural History Museum: I set up the national or hungarica as well as the world or orbis terrarum braconid collections. My second step was to revise the type material. The bulk of this curatorial work was carried out in 1965-1969. SZEPLIGETI never designated the type specimens of his species in the formal way of the nomenclatural rule being in force even in his life. The entomological collections were set up so that first the braconids were pinned in the drawers and below them were attached the cards with the species names. The different taxa, namely the varieties, species, genera, tribes, subfamilies followed each other usually in systematic order. Further details of the braconid collection see CSIKI (1915) and QUICKE(1991). Rearranging the braconid collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum I accomplished two changes: (1) the labels with species names precede the specimens themselves and (2) the frame colour of the name labels is uniformly dark grey in the Hungarian collection; the frame colour of the name labels in the collection orbis terrarum indicates the zoogeographical regions: black - Palaearctic, light grey - Nearctic, yellow - Oriental, blue - Ethiopian or Afrotropical, green - Neotropical and red - Australian / Pacific. Concerning SZEPLIGETI'

s braconid types my designative work relied on the collating of (1) the original braconid syntype specimens, (2) the original descriptions, (3) the localities given on the labels of the braconid specimens and in the original descriptions and (4) the provisional taxon name labels attached frequently by SZEPLIGETI to the specimens of either new or known species.