Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 70. (Budapest 1978)

Papp, L.: Contribution to the revision of the Palaearctic Lauxaniidae (Diptera)

ANNALES HISTORICO-NATURALES MUSEI NATIONALIS HUNGARICI Tomus 70. Budapest 1978. Contribution to the Revision of the Palaearctic Lauxaniidae (Diptera) by L. PAPP, Budapest Abstract — The Palaearctic species of the family Lauxaniidae are partly revised. The revised lists of the species of genera Homoneura V. D. WULP, Minettia ROB.-DESV. and Calliopum STRAND are given. Two new subgenera (Schumannimya subg. n. of Sapromyza and Callixania sub. n. of Lauxania) and ten new species (Homoneura maghrebi sp. n., H. remmi sp. n., H. shewelliana sp. n., H. subnotata sp. n.,H. thaihammeri sp. n., H. tunisica sp. n., Lyeiella mihalyiisp. n., L. stylata sp. n., L. subpallidiventris sp. n. and Calliopum splendidum sp. n.) are described. Ten species are synonymized and further three possible synonyms are suggested. With 42 figures. The family Lauxaniidae is one of the least studied groups of flies. One of the first more comprehensive works on the Palaearctic species is the contribution of BECKER (1895). BECKER in this work described numerous new species since he knew very brief, sometimes almost useless descriptions of earlier species. He entirely disregarded the characteristics of the genital organs so much so that he apparently did not know the structure of the postabdomen of males and females. Consequently, in many instances he determined the sex of the specimens wrongly. As a specific difference he frequently used features of variable morphological character, thus, in several cases he described the very same species as being new (see below). Later on, in other contributions (BECKER 1907, etc.) he described several new species. The Lauxaniidae of the Carpathian Basin were comprehensively treated first by THALHAMMER (1899) in the Fauna Regni Hungáriáé. The specimens referred to may even be studied today, unfortunately, most of them proved to be wrong identifications. I may also venture to say that his determinations should entirely be disregarded. The first profound work on the Lauxaniidae of the Carpathian Basin was written by KERTÉSZ (1921); he was a keen-eyed expert, well versed in the literature; unfortunately, according to contemporary custom he did not study types, thus, he misinterpreted a few species. The respective part of the "Die Fliegen der palaearktischen Region" was written by CZERNY (1932). From such a monograph one surely would have expected to check the accumulated data and to make a reliable synthesis. But we must establish here that CZERNY contributed the worst part of the monograph series, thus making matters even worse in the taxonomy of Lauxaniidae

. Let us illustrate the situation with a few examples. He discussed 168 species in his work, of which about 1/3, to be exact 50 species, he had never seen (!); he misidentified 6 species; he examined 8 species which had not been determined by the original author; he described 35 new species. Consequently, with due regard to our predecessors, we may suppose that he knew 69 species at the best. Thus, it is not surprising that the species of BECKER and CZERNY gradually become synonyms. Following the work of CZERNY, SZILÁDY (1941) newly elaborated the Lauxaniidae fauna of the Carpathian Basin. The perfunctoriness of the latter author is comparable only with CZERNY'S. Since all the specimens determined and labelled by SZILÁDY are still found in the Hungarian Natural History Museum, they may be checked that out of his 74 species he misidentified 28, of course, the proportion of wrongly identified specimens is even higher