so. 57. 72 P (727.5) 



Article XIV. — A NP:W WINGLESS FLY (PUUCIPHORA 

 B0RIN(2UENENSIS) FROM PORTO RICO. 



By William Morton Wheeler. 



Plate XXXIV 



The genus Piiliciphora was established by Dahl in 1897 for some 

 wingless and halterless flics which he had collected in the Bismarck 

 Archipelago on dead birds and the carrion-scented flowers of the 

 Aroid AmorpJiophalliis. Being of the opinion that these flies would 

 shed a new light on the jjhylogenetic origin of the fleas (Aphaniptera) 

 from dipterous insects, he named the new species P. lucijcra, and 

 assigned it to the well-known family PhoridcC. In the following year, 

 Wandolleck, while studying the types or co-tyi^es of P. lucijcra, found 

 that Dahl had described two species under the same name; that he 

 had, in fact, designated as the male of P. lucijcra the female of another 

 wingless and halterless species. As if to show his distaste for Dahl's 

 views on the phylogeny of the fleas, and in utter disregard of all 

 precedent among systematic naturalists, he brushed aside the name 

 Piiliciphora lucijcra and substituted two new generic and specific 

 names, calling the female of P. lucijera, Stcthopathns occllatiis, and 

 the supposed male, Chonoccphalits dorsalis. These two insects, 

 together with a third which in the meantime Cook had described from 

 specimens collected on a Libcrian land-snail (AcJiatiiia) as Wan- 

 dollcckia (since named W. cooki Brues), were removed from the 

 Phoridae by Wandolleck and elevated to the rank of an independent 

 family, the Stethopathidas. 



It is only too evident that Wandolleck's Stcthopathns occllatiis is 

 merely a synonym of Dahl's Piiliciphora lucijcra. It follows also 

 that the word Stethopathidae must be abandoned even if Brues had 

 not shown that the three wingless genera supposed to constitute this 

 group are closely related to two older genera of subapterous flies 

 (Psyllomyia Loew and ALnigmatias Meinert), and to several sub- 

 apterous genera first described by Brues himself {Ecitomyia, Com- 

 moptera, Xanionotiim, and Aconstistoptcra) . Brues's further discovery 

 of the male of Ecitomyia whcclcri, which has well-developed wings 



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