History of Chnootriba hirta species name by Riaan Stals

Originally published on iSpot 11 January 2017 by Riaan Stals

So, what is the valid [= 'correct'] name of this species?

There are many possibilities, but only one is correct.
The first description and naming of this species was by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1781, under the name Coccinella hirta. Based on two specimens from The Peninsula of Good Hope. In 1781 there was just one genus of lady beetle, namely Coccinella. "Proper" Coccinella nowadays are not found in the Afrotropical Region.

Probably because this is a common, widespread, and variable species, it was subsequently (1801–1899) described again no fewer than eight times, adding eight names that all apply to this species. From 1850–1930, seven "variations" or "abberations" of the species were described, based on variation in colour pattern. Seven more names. In 1991, the guru of African lady beetles, Dr Helmut Fürsch, comprehensively revised what he called the "Henosepilachna hirta-group". He synonymised most of these names, but he retained four dubious subspecies, the names of two of which were not yet included in the confusion above.

So, I don't know how many species-group names in total that make up, but following the Principle of Priority (and barring something odd), only the first (= oldest) name that applies to the species is valid. That clearly is Thunberg's « hirta » from 1781.
So the valid species name is « hirta », OK. But what about the genus name? Why does the British Museum (= Natural History Museum, London) and the iSpot dictionary differ? And why are both wrong?
The original genus-species combination was, as seen, Coccinella hirta.
The original Coccinella of Linnaeus was split up into several hundred genera in the subsequent 259 years. The genus Epilachna was erected by the mindlessly prolific Auguste Chevrolat, nevermind him actually being in the French Civil Service and an amateur coleopterist. The name was first published in the second of the enormous catalogues of the stupendous beetle collection of Count Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean; and that was in 1836.
« hirta » was transferred to Epilachna in 1850, by the first of the two greatest lady beetle taxonomists ever, Étienne Mulsant. The name Epilachna hirta was hence valid from 1850 -- but only until 1975. (A-hem, British Museum.)
« hirta » enjoyed a short stint in the long-defunct-but-revived-in-2016 genus Solanophila -- I don't know in which years, but it included Julius Weise's opinion in 1909.
The genus Henosepilachna was created by Li in 1961. In 1975, Helmut Fürsch transferred « hirta » to Henosepilachna, and since 1975 the valid name of this beetle was Henosepilachna hirta. This is the consensus presented by Jadwiszczak & Wegrzynowicz in their enirely useful but miserably bound catalogue of 2003. That is the source of the current iSpot name.

Most recently all hell broke loose in the taxonomy and internal classification of the Epilachnini. Szawaryn et al. (2015) and Tomaszewska & Szawaryn (2016) completely (and I mean completely) upended the tribe with the first modern phylogenetic analysis of the tribe, which happens to also be the only objective analysis of the group to date. I have not yet completely digested or understood the result and its implications, but three things are certain:
1) There are no "real" Epilachna in sub-Saharan Africa.
2) There are no "real" Henosepilachna in sub-Saharan Africa. (A-hem, iSpot.)
3) Since 2015 or 2016 [it's unclear], the only valid ['correct' in botanical terms] name of this lady beetle species
has been ...
Chnootriba hirta.

Posted on December 13, 2017 09:43 AM by