Macrocerococcus superbus Leonardi, 1907: 152.
Ceroputo volynicus Nasonov, 1908: 472. Synonymy by Borchsenius, 1949: 296. Ceroputo superbus; Lindinger, 1912: 65. Change of combination.
Phenacoccus seurati Vayssière, 1927: 109. Synonymy by Balachowsky, 1953 b: 304. Macrocerococcus tauricus Borchsenius, 1948: 33. Synonymy by Danzig, 1999: 84. Macrocerococcus kiritshenkoi Borchsenius, 1949: 298. Synonymy by Danzig, 1999: 84. Puto tauricus; Tereznikova, 1975 a: 240. Change of combination.
Puto superbus; Tereznikova, 1975 a: 241. Change of combination.
Macrocerococcus kiritzhenkoi; Tang, 1992: 398. Misspelling of species name. Puto kiritshenkoi; Ben-Dov, 1994: 424. Change of combination.
Puto superbus was described from Tempio, Sardinia, Italy, on unidentified species of grass (Poaceae) in 1907 by G. Leonardi. We have examined specimens from the type series that have identical data as the lectotype and also were mounted from dried specimens included in Chermotheca Italica (Leonardi, 1909). We agree with the illustration of this species given by Marotta and Tranfaglia (1993). We also have examined a wingless adult male from Fürth, Germany, on grass and it possesses eight eyes in addition to the lateral ocelli and one pair of lateral filaments. There is a possibility that P. superbus encompasses more than one species. Marotta and Tranfaglia (1985) discussed the variation in the dorsal tubular ducts in the cerarii but later (Marotta & Tranfaglia, 1993) determined that P. superbus lacked dorsal ducts entirely. Specimens with these ducts were identified as P. tauricus. Danzig (1999) again placed P. tauricus as a junior subjective synonym of P. superbus. A careful analysis of all species in the genus is required to sort out their true identity. For this paper we have studied types of the junior synonyms Puto kiritshenkoi (Borchsenius), Puto tauricus (Borchsenius) and Phenacoccus seurati Vayssière but had insufficient series of specimens to come to definitive conclusions about synonyms.