L. Forró - É. Murai szerk.: Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 5. 1989 (Budapest, 1989)

Stoch, F.: Critical remarks on the southern Italian asellids described by E. Dudich (1925) with redescriptions of some taxa (Crustacea, Isopoda, Asellota)

MISCELLANEA ZOOLOGICA HUNGARICA ABSTRACT. A small collection of asellids studied by DUDICH (Budapest) in 1925 and deposited in the Hungarian Natural History Museum has been re-examined; four taxa have been determined: Proasellus banyulensis italicus comb, n., Proasellus banyulensis polychaetus comb, n., Proasellus wolfi comb. n. and Asellus aquaticus (L.) sensu Racovitza, 1919 (both nominal form and ssp. arthrobranchi- alis)

. The material of P. b. italicus and P. b. polychaetus has been redescribed; a critical survey of all the epigean taxa already described from Italy is also given. KEYWORDS: Isopoda, Proasellus spp., redescription, Italy Since the works of DUDICH (192 5, 192 5a), the taxonomy and distribution of epigean freshwater asellids from Italy has received little attention (ARC

ANGE LI 1942; STOCH 1985L Up to now three species have been known: Asellus aquaticus (L. ) sensu Racovitza, 1919 (both nominal form and ssp. arthrobranchialis Dudich, 192 5); Proasellus istrianus (Stammer, 1932) (recently redescribed by STOCH, 1985); Proasellus coxalis (Dollfus, 1932), with several subspecies (italicus. Dudich, 1925; polychaetus Dudich, 1925, wolfi Dudich, 1925, dudichi Strouhal, 1937, sardous Arcangeli, 1942 ! nomen nodum

! , tergestinus Stoch, 1985). Except for P. istrianus

, a well distinguished species which belongs to the P. meridianus-group, the taxonomy of the Italian populations attributed to the other two taxa is still in a chaotic state. In fact the authors interested in the determination of material from Italy (STAMMER 1932; STROUHAL 1937; ARCANGELI 1942; PESCE and TETE 1976, 1978; STOCH 1985) confined themselves to the uncritical description of the newly collected specimens, and based their diagnosis on the poor illustrations given by RACOVITZA (1919, 1919a) and DUDICH (1925, 1925a). A recent revision of the P. coxalis-group (STOCH in press) demonstrated that several species are hidden under the name "

coxalis"

, and that P. coxalis s. str. is not present in Europe. Unfortunately, the diagnostic characters of the different taxa were rarely taken into consideration by previous authors. Consequently there was a need of a detailed reexamination of the type material of all the taxa previously described and particularly of those described by DUDICH in 192 5, following the new taxonomic criteria pointed out in my previous paper (STOCH, 1985). This is why I have studied almost all the existing material of Proasellus described from Italy by DUDICH (1925, 1925a), STAMMER (1932), STROUHAL Í19 37) and ARCANGELI (T942), and I have fixed lectotypes of all the taxa which have kept their taxonomic value. The first results of these studies were published in STOCH (in press), STOCH et al. (in press). This paper deals with the material of DUDICH's collection and the taxa distributTomus 5. 1989. p. 61—69 Contribution to the knowledge of the Isopods: XI. Critical remarks on the southern Italian asellids described by E. DUDICH (1925) with redescriptions of some taxa (Crustacea, Isopoda, Asellota) By F. STOCH (Received January 17, 1989)