The Wharton Lab

Neopius Gahan, 1917: 203. Type species: Neopius carinaticeps Gahan, 1917 (monobasic and original designation)

Type locality: Wimbledon, North Dakota, USA; holotype male in US National Museum.

The type species of Neopius is a junior subjective synonym of Opius rudis Wesmael, lectotype female in Brussels, designated by Koenig (1972), who noted that the large type series consisted of several apparent species. The synonymy was first noted by Fischer (1967: 959)

In the process of separating Euopius Fischer from Neopius Gahan, Fischer (1967) placed Neopius as a junior subjective synonym of Opius. Later, Fischer (1972: 88) placed the type species of Neopius in the Opius subgenus Xynobius, though he neglected to list Neopius in the synonymy under Xynobius. Wharton (2006) noted that rudis was quite different from the type species of Xynobius in many respects and should not be included in Xynobius, following similar statements by Quicke et al. (1997), who placed Neopius as a subgenus and therefore a synonym of Phaedrotoma. Li et al. (2013) list Neopius Gahan as a valid genus.

There is some confusion regarding Neopius. Fischer (1967: 959-960) apparently realized that most of the species that he previously included in Neopius Gahan were different from Gahan’s type species and he therefore described a new genus (Euopius) to accommodate them. There was never a Neopius Fischer, only a Neopius Gahan sensu Fischer (1965). Fischer (1977: 1) is unfortunately a bit confusing in this regard. Li et al. (2013) compound the confusion by listing Neopius Fischer, 1965 (with type species by original designation Neopius macrops Fischer) as a synonym of Phaedrotoma. However, Fischer (1965: 187) clearly attributes Neopius to Gahan and lists carinaticeps as the type species. Fischer (1965) only included descriptions of those species that he was newly describing (all of which he later transferred to Euopius), but does include carinaticeps in his key to the known species.

Neopius is only known from the type species, Neopius rudis (Wesmael). This species has a complete occipital carina, the head and body have shagreened sculpture, and the notauli often extend to the midpit. Otherwise, it is a fairly typical opiine, with an exposed labrum, mandibles without basal tooth or lobe, heavily sculptured precoxal sulcus, a short, broad T1 lacking a dorsope, and a fore wing with r arising basad the midpoint of the stigma and m-cu either postfurcal or antefurcal (possibly sexually dimorphic).

The type series of carinaticeps was reared in part from leaf-mining flies on Hordeum.

This page was assembled by Bob Wharton and Danielle Restuccia. It is part of a review of the genera of World Opiinae, conducted at Texas A&M University. We are particularly grateful to Xanthe Shirley, Andrew Ly, Patricia Mullins, Trent Hawkins, Lauren Ward, Cheryl Hyde, Karl Roeder, and Andrea Walker, who did nearly all of the imaging (together with Danielle) for this project. Matt Yoder and Istvan Miko provided guidance on databasing issues associated with our use of mx and HAO respectively. This project would not have been possible without the kindness of many curators at museums throughout the world who gave generously of their time to Bob Wharton and his students. In particular, I thank Henry Townes (deceased) and David Wahl (American Entomological Institute, Gainesville), Gordon Nishida (Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu), Norm Penny, and Bob Zuparko (California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco), Bill Mason (deceased), Mike Sharkey, Andrew Bennett, and Henri Goulet (Canadian National Collection, Ottawa), Paul Dessart (deceased) (Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique, Brussels), Marc De Meyer (Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika, Tervuren), Axel Bachmann (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Natureles, Buenos Aires), Eberhard Koenigsmann (deceased) and Frank Koch (Museum fuer Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universitaet, Berlin), J. Casevitz Weulersse and Claire Villemant (Museum National d’Historie Naturelle, Paris), James O’Connor (National Museum of Ireland, Dublin), Jenö Papp (National Museum of Natural History, Budapest), Kees van Achterberg (National Museum of Natural History, Leiden), Max Fischer, Herb Zettel, and Dominique Zimmermann (Naturhistorisches Museum, Wien), Per Persson and Lars-Åke Janzon (Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, Stockholm), Ermenegildo Tremblay (Silvestri Collection, Portici), Erasmus Haeselbarth (Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, Munich), Tom Huddleston and Gavin Broad (The Natural History Museum, London), Paul Marsh and Robert Kula (USDA Systematic Research Laboratory and US National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D. C.), Vladimir Tobias (deceased) and Sergey Belokobylskij (Zoological Institute, Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg), and Roy Danielsson (Zoological Institute, Department of Systematics, Lund) for facilitating loans and general assistance associated with examination of holotypes and other material in their care. This work was supported largely by NSF/PEET DEB 0328922 and 0949027, with REU supplements 0723663, 1026618, 1213790, and 1313933 (to Wharton). Page last updated July, 2015. The material on this page is freely available, but should be acknowledged if used elsewhere.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers DEB 9300517, DEB (PEET) 9712543, DEB (PEET) 0328922 with REU supplements 0723663 and 1026618 and DEB 0949027 with REU supplements 1213790 and 1313933. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.