10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.61. 



NOTES ON PHILONIX FITCH AND ACRASPIS MAYR. 



The genus Philo7iix Fitch was proposed in 1859 for two apterous 

 species of Cynipidae, fulmcoUis Fitch * and nigricoUis Fitch, captured 

 on snow. Ashmead ^ subsequently designated fulvicollls as the type, 

 and Dalla Torre and KiefFer ® placed the genotype in Blorhiza. A 

 study of Fitch's tyjDe of fulvicollis in the United States National 

 Museum shows a scutellum which is normally rounded behind and a 

 very peculiar spine broadest at its truncated posterior end, which is 

 armed with long bristles. No flies reared from a known gall are at 

 hand which agree with this specimen, so the gall of this species is yet 

 to be discovered. Fitch thought it was from a root gall, but more 

 likely it is from a deciduous gall on a leaf. The illustration showing 

 these characters is from a balsam mount of a congeneric new species 

 here described. 



The genus Acraspls Mayr ^ was proposed in 1881 for two American 

 species which he no doubt had before him, '•'■ 'pezomachoides Osten 

 Sacken and erinacei Walsh " and which he did not separate by any 

 mentioned characters. The former species, whose gall had long been 

 known in literature under the name of Cynips pisiwi, was reared in 

 1862 and described as Cynips pezomachoides Osten Sacken. The lat- 

 ter was a nomen nudum for the gall only for the fly was not described 

 at the time Mayr wrote, although he no doubt considered it as a valid 

 Ashmead synonomized AcraspU with Philonix^ and Beutenmueller ^ 

 Osten Sacken as the type of Acraspis. In 1897, and again in 1903, 

 Ashmead synonomized Acraspis with Philonix, and Beutenmueller ^ 

 and other authors have followed him. In pezomachoides, however, 

 the scutellum is triangular, distinctly pointed behind, and the ventral 

 spine, while broader and shorter than in most genera of the oak-gall 

 makers, is rounded behind and very hairy, not truncate with the very 

 long bristles of Philonix. These seem to be sufficiently good generic 

 characters to warrant the separation of these genera which Ashmead 

 united. When the described species of these two genera were studied 

 with these characters in mind, it was found that fulvicollis Fitch, 

 nigricoUis Fitch, lanaegloluU Ashmead, and nigra (Gillette) {=-gil- 

 lettei Bassett) belong in Philonix, while pczonuichoides (Osten 

 Sacken), villosa Gillette, macrocarpoe Bassett {=zundulata Gillette), 

 hirta (Bassett), echini Ashmead, erinacei Beutenmueller, and piin- 

 oides Beutenmueller belong in Acraspis. 



This arrangement receives biological confirmation in the fact that 

 the galls of all the species of Acra.spis are all of the same general 



* Fifth Kept. Nox. Ins. N. Y., 1859, p. 783. 

 •Psyche, vol. 10, 1903, p. 148. 



• Das Tiei reich. Lief. 24, 1910, p. 402. 

 ''Genera gallenbew. Cynip, 1881, pp. 2, 29. 



«Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 2G, 1909, p. 246. 



