150 Z. BOUCEK 



Leucaspis nursei Cameron, 1906 : 92-93, <$ £• LECTOTYPE <§ (here designated), Pakistan: 

 Quetta (BMNH) [examined]. Syn. n. 



Tourette (1780) was apparently the first to describe and figure this species (from 

 Lyon, France) but he did not clearly use a binomen and thus no name for the 

 species can be credited to him. This seems to have been evident already to Villers 

 (1789) and to Gmelin (1790), who both independently proposed valid binominal 

 names for Tourette's species. Another name, L. gigas, was proposed by Fabricius 

 (1793), who refers not only to Tourette but also to Villers, unnecessarily replacing 

 the validly published L. gallica Villers. At that time he was probably not aware of 

 the name proposed by Gmelin and from the way in which he quotes Villers I 

 assume that he may have had only some second-hand information and did not 

 regard Villers' name as valid. In any case, however odd it may seem, the Fabrician 

 name L. gigas has been in use ever since and the Villers and Gmelin names have been 

 forgotten. Tourette's paper is rather rare and was not available to the reviser 

 of the group, Schletterer, who wrongly assumed (1890 : 203), probably from 

 Fabricius' reference, that gigas was the name originally used by Tourette. Thus 

 he lessened any possible doubts about the validity of the name gigas, at least to 

 those authors to whom Tourette's paper was not accessible. I propose to accept, 

 therefore, the well-known name L. gigas Fabricius as valid and ask the International 

 Commission on the Zoological Nomenclature to place it on the Official List of the 

 Specific Names in Zoology (Boucek, 1973). 



I could not trace any original material of Tourette but from his figures it is 

 unambiguous that his species was what we understand as L. gigas, the form with 

 the ovipositor not reaching the base of the first tergite. L. gallica and L. lugdunaea 

 are names proposed for Tourette's species. Fabricius must have had at least a 

 couple of L. gigas, although that male he briefly described most probably did not 

 belong to the species, as no definite record of a male specimen is known from 

 France. He refers to the Bosc Collection the bulk of which is in Paris, but no 

 specimen of gigas is there. Dr B. Petersen found, however, one female in the 

 Fabricius Collection in Copenhagen, which in all probability comes from the 

 original material. I designate this female as lectotype of gigas. 



L. grandis. The original material came from Fiume (= Rjeka). Consequently 

 two females from the Klug collection, regarded as types cannot be accepted as 

 such, for they come from Ragusa (= Dubrovnik). They are old and were mentioned 

 already by Westwood (1839 : 2 4 2 )- 



L. varia. The apparently single preserved specimen with the right data and 

 fitting the description is designated as lectotype. The taxonomic status of this 

 and the preceding name is discussed below. Both varia and grandis were figured 

 as early as 1814 (pis 15, 16) by Ahrens. 



L. nigricomis. No orginal material traced. It was probably returned to Paris 

 with the rest of Laporte's material. Although I have similar doubts to those of 

 Schletterer (1890 : 208), mainly what concerns the black head, I accept the synonymy 

 with gigas proposed by him. Probably the description was not quite correct. 



L. shuckardi. The single type (Westwood, 1834 '• 2I 5> ' m y example of this 

 species') is a female, as is obvious from the description of the ovipositor, although 



