Brief Summary
provided by Catalog of Hymenoptera in America North of Mexico
In 1923 Gahan and Fagan (U. S. Natl. Mus., Bul. 124: 24, 31, 133) changed the application of the well-known names Chalcis, Brachymeria, Smicra and Smiera. These names had been used extensively in the literature for almost a century. The changes very well may have been erroneous, because of the fact that Gahan and Fagan had examined none of the types of the type-species involved. Their conclusions were based entirely on a study of the literature, principally volume 5 of Dalla Torre's Catalogus Hymenopterorum, published in 1898. That work was a bibliographic, not a taxonomic, one. However, these changes in the application of familiar names were accepted by all subsequent workers except for Schmitz, who published a large work on the Ethiopian Chalcididae in 1946. All other works in the world literature followed Gahan and Fagan. An enormous literature that used these names as redefined by Gahan and Fagan has been published in the last 50 years. It would be a mistake at this late date to try to reverse the changes made by Gahan and Fagan, irrespective of their soundness. It should be kept in mind, however, that the application of those names before and after 1923 is quite different.
- bibliographic citation
- Catalog of Hymenoptera in America North of Mexico. 1979. Prepared cooperatively by specialists on the various groups of Hymenoptera under the direction of Karl V. Krombein and Paul D. Hurd, Jr., Smithsonian Institution, and David R. Smith and B. D. Burks, Systematic Entomology Laboratory, Insect Identification and Beneficial Insect Introduction Institute. Science and Education Administration, United States Department of Agriculture.
