236 
Psyche 
[December 
A SPECIMEN OF THE JAMAICAN VERMILEO 
By William Morton Wheeler 
In a collection of Jamaican Diptera recently received by 
the Museum of Comparative Zoology I find what might be 
regarded as a topotype of the Rhagionid Vermileo tibialis 
(Walker) . This specimen, a male, was taken by Miss Lilly 
Perkins at Baron Hill, near Jacksontown, Trelawny, and is 
interesting both because the species has not before been re- 
covered since it was described and figured by Walker, nearly 
eighty years ago, in his “Diptera Sandersiana” (p. 156, PI. 
4, Fig. 3.) as the type of his genus Pheneus, and because of 
its very close relationship to a Cuban Vermileo which I de- 
scribed in my “Demons of the Dust” (1930) and in Psyche, 
Vol. 36, 1931, p. 167. This form I regarded as a distinct 
variety ( dowi ) of tibialis since it differed in certain respects 
from Walker’s description and figure, which were based on 
a male specimen. Miss Perkins’ specimen lacks the hind 
legs and portions of the antennae and anterior tarsi, but 
there are in other portions of the body several peculiarities 
which show that the Cuban form is, as I inferred, at least 
varietally and possibly even subspecifically distinct. 
The specimen is larger and more robust than the dowi 
males which I reared from larvae taken by Mr. R. P. Dow 
in August, 1930, in the Trinidad Mountains of Cuba 1 . Its 
body and wing measure 12 and 11.5 mm. respectively, 
whereas the corresponding dimensions of dowi are 9.5-10 
and 8 mm. In the Jamaican type the face and vertex are 
decidedly broader, the eyes less convex, the first antennal 
joint shorter, not more than one and one-half times as long 
as broad, the humeri more prominent and more acute. The 
body is more uniformly fulvous, the abdominal segments 
2 More recently, one of my students, Mr. B. B. Leavitt, collected a 
large number of larvae of this form at much lower elevations not far 
from the Atkins Laboratory of Harvard University at Soledad, near 
Cienfuegos, and has studied their structure, transformation and be- 
havior. 
