Apertochrysa vernalis

Ap1: Apertochrysa vernalis (Navás, 1926) ??

Chrysopa vernalis Navás, 1926: original description

Synonymized under Anisochrysa prasina (Burmeister, 1839) by Aspöck et al. (1980).

Legrand et al. (2008) designated the type specimen at the Natural History Museum in Paris (MNHN) as lectotype. The male type specimen had been collected in the region of Smyrne (Izmir) in western Turkey, 14 May 1912, by G. de Kerville. The original description by Navás (1926), featuring the yellow vertex, could apply to several prasinoid species, but an inspection of the male type in Paris by PD showed A. vernalis to be closest to Ap1. The male still has a yellow vertex. This specimen does not have furwings, which excludes Ap2, A. prasina, and A. benedictae. Examples of Ap1 were found in 2012 on the Greek island of Samos, barely 60 km from Izmir (PD, unpublished). So, A. vernalis seems to correspond to Ap1. However, there is an older type specimen described by Navás (1914) with yellowish vertex (Chrysopa caucasica Navás, 1914) from Transcaucasia. It is a female and the original description and an examination of the specimen at the museum in Paris were inadequate for conclusive identification. Therefore, C. caucasica, older than C. vernalis, could instead be Ap1 - or possibly Ap2.

Earlier than either of the two species above, Navás (1911) described C. prasina var. amabilis, with red sutures below the antennae. The description would fit Ap1, with two reddish-brown longitudinal bands (“linea arcuate rubra ante antennas”). However, Navás did not mention a yellow vertex, and his var. amabilis better fits the description of Ap2, which also occurs in Spain (R. Alcalá Herrera & F. Ruano, unpublished information). Navás (1911), in his original description, even mentioned that the type specimen looked like “similis adspersae (sic.) Wesm.”. Additionally, A. aspersa also is a good candidate for assignment to Ap2 (see below). Ap1 was recently found in large numbers near Granada, Spain (R. Alcalá Herrera & F. Ruano, unpublished information), and Navás may have seen and described several specimens of Ap1 as new varieties of either Chrysopa prasina or C. mariana. With a molecular sequencing approach now being applied to older type specimens (Price et al., 2015), both A. vernalis and Ap1 may eventually be established as junior synonyms to one of the earlier described prasinoid species or varieties.