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Indiana University Studies 
More unfortunate than this use of several terms for our 
present genus has been the European application of the term 
Cynips, ever since Mayr’s publications, to a totally different 
genus which Rohwer and Fagan have re-named Adleria. It is 
to be regretted that our International Rules do not allow us 
to recognize this usage, but as long as we operate under the 
rules, we should apply Cynips to the phylogenetic unit which 
includes the species folii, and which, therefore, is strictly 
synonymous with Forster’s Dryophanta. 
The taxonomic concept of our present genus has only slowly 
emerged from this nomenclatorial confusion, altho in the 
brilliant revision of the Cynipidae by Hartig in 1840 all of the 
then-known (5) European species that we now recognize in 
this genus were brought together as numbers 2 to 6 of the 
Cynips there defined. The unity of the present group was 
further emphasized in 1881 by Mayr and we have already 
shown that 88 per cent of Mayr’s inclusions are still accept- 
able. No later author has, in our judgment, had more than 
48 per cent of his inclusions warranted phylogenetically (see 
page 62). 
This widespread confusion in the interpretation of Cynips 
has not been wholly consequent on the difficulty of interpret- 
ing the relatively uniform structures of gall wasp species. 
Felt (Journ. Econ. Ent. 19:672) considers the situation due 
to the complex life cycle of our insects and to the failure of 
a sufficient number of economic entomologists to turn to 
cynipid taxonomy as an avocation. It is our own judgment 
that the poor work is the result of using book descriptions 
and “diagnostic characters” convenient for the manufacture 
of “Keys,” instead of actual specimens and adequate series of 
the species involved. The current chaos in the interpretation 
of cynipid genera dates from the publication, in 1893, of the 
cynipid volume of the Catalogus Hymenopterorum by C. C. 
de Dalla Torre, a painstaking bibliographer, but a systematist 
with a naive faith in published descriptions and a supreme 
interest in the convenience of a classification. Later treat- 
ments of Cynips have uncritically accepted the Dalla Torre 
Catalog. If I depart from this tradition, it is because I 
believe that the study of thousands of individuals, represent- 
ing all of the species of a group, are a sounder basis for 
phylogenetic interpretations than a catalog made by a biblog- 
