32 
Psyche 
[March 
American Albitarsis Group, as defined by Townes ( 1962, p. 219). Its 
discovery extends considerably northward the known distribution of 
the Albitarsis Group in Andean South America, for previously no 
species of this assemblage had been recorded beyond Cuzco in central 
Peru. There still remains a gap in our knowledge of the Albitarsis 
Group between Ecuador and San Jose de Costa Rica (Volcan Irazu) 
in Central America, but the finding of an Ecuadorian species supports 
the impression that this lacuna is not a natural fact but merely the 
result of insufficient collecting in the northern Andes. 
Among its relatives, Hoplites is closest to a species from the 
mountains of Tucuman Province of northern Argentina 2 with which 
it shares many features of color, sculpture, wing-venation and pro- 
portion but from which it differs principally in its partially orange 
instead of wholly black male gaster, longer malar space ( 1 .2-1.3 times 
.as long as basal width of mandible in female and 0. 9-1.0 times in 
male versus 1.0 times in female and o. 8-0.9 times in male), very thin 
instead of rather thick and swollen subalarum, much larger and 
longer propodeal cristae, and in having a large notch on the ovipositor 
tip while the Argentine species is almost unique in lacking a notch. 
The differences noted are of a type which experience has shown to 
have specific value among the South American Trachysphyrus. 
Nonetheless, we know nothing of what happens to these forms in the 
mediate Andes of Peru and Bolivia^ so that future collecting in those 
regions might turn up intergrading populations. It seems much more 
probable, however, that in this case we are dealing with two distinct 
members of a subgroup which will eventually prove to have several 
other species in Andean South America. 
In addition to T. hoplites , only Trachysphyrus metallicus (Came- 
ron) is known from the Andes of Ecuador. Metallicus is a large, 
brilliantly blue-green species in which the axillus vein of the hind- 
wing is intermediate between the posterior margin of the wing and 
the submediella and in which the nodus of the ovipositor tip bears 
a huge notch that gives rise to a prominent, forward-directed groove. 
Metallicus belongs to the strictly South American Imperialis Group 
and is also the northernmost representative of its series. 
Further collecting will probably show that other groups of Trachy- 
sphyrus are present in Ecuador. The very broad and complex Andean 
mass which stretches from Ecuador through Peru and Bolivia to 
2 This species is No. 23 in the author’s monograph of the South American 
Trachysphyrus. It is not given a name here because there is uncertainty as 
to whether this shorter paper or the larger work will be published first and 
it is desired to validate the name of the Argentine species in the latter. 
