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Atherix ibis

Subspecies
No subspecies are recognized.

Original description
Fabricius, 1798

Synonyms
Rhagio ibis Fabricius, 1798
Atherix ibis (Fabricius, 1798)
Atherix pachypus Bigot, 1887

Atherix pachypus has been described from the nearctic region, but is now considered to be a synonym of Atherix ibis (Thomas, 1993).

Schumann et al. (1999) list further species of Atherix for Germany: Atherix flavipes and Atherix ignota. However, these appear to be nomina dubia. I do not know the original description of Atherix ignota and cannot currently place this species. Atherix flavipes has been described by Fabricius in 1781 with Germany as patria. The original description is vague and I am unable to identify this name with any known German species. It could also refer to a species in the Rhagionidae or the Therevidae. Meigen in his 1804 catalog lists this species in his "Zusäzze" (old German for "additions") already indicating in this way that he does not regard this species with the same confidence as the ones that he lists with numbers in the catalog proper. He also synonymizes it with Gmelin´s Musca chrysopus, which Gmelin simply has renamed (but he refers to Fabricius´ description). Later in his 1820 catalogue Meigen mentions the species as "unknown to me" and only lists it for the sake of completeness. In the catalog of Bezzi (1903) this species is marked with a question mark, obviously to indicate that Bezzi himself questions the validity of this species. The name is not listed in most of the more recent catalogs of the European fauna. In my opinion, the likelihood that the species this name refers to will ever be confidently identified is rather low and I see no benefit in listing this dubious species. I therefore do not recognize this species here and regard it as a synonym of Atherix ibis. Below is a full tentative synonymy list of this name in order to document its taxonomic history.

Rhagio flauipes Fabricius, 1781 (this is the original spelling)
Rhagio flavipes Fabricius, 1781 (justified emendation of original spelling, see note below))
Atherix flavipes (Fabricius, 1781)
Musca chrysopus Gmelin, 1788 (unjustified new name for Rhagio flauipes)
Atherix chrysopus (Gmelin, 1788)
Musca chrysops Gmelin, 1792 (?)
Atherix chrysops (Gmelin, 1792) (?)
Atherix erythraspis Bezzi, 1909 (unclear synonym; proposed in Schumann et al. 1999)

Note: the original spelling of "Rhagio flavipes" is "Rhagio flauipes". At that time, many authors writing in the Latin language also preferred to use the classical Latin alphabet that did not include a separate letter "V" and used the letter "U" for both "U" and "V". Of course, it is desirable today to spell names that were written in this way (like "flauipes") now with either "v" or "u" as appropriate. Unfortunately, however, this change is not among the "Spellings that must be corrected"-Article of the Code (Article 32.5) and thus changing "flauipes" to "flavipes" would be an unjustified emendation not backed by Article 32.5. However, if an unjustified emendation is in prevailing usage, then it is deemed to be justified (Article 33.2.3.1). This is the case with "flavipes": to my knowledge no subsequent author has used the original spelling "flauipes" and thus "flavipes" is in prevailing usage and therefore must be considered as a justified emendation according to Article 33.2.3.1.

Identification

Distribution

Biology