Blatta schaefferi Goeze, 1778 (nomen
oblitum) (see note below)
Blatta maculata Schreber, 1781
Phyllodromia
maculata (Schreber, 1781) (lapsus)
Phyllodromica
maculata (Schreber, 1781)
Aphlebia maculata (Schreber, 1781)
Hololampra maculata (Schreber, 1781)
Note: In
1766 and the following years, Schaeffer
published his three-volume work dealing
with
animals that he had found in the
vicinity of
Regensburg. Among the animals that he
figured in
color in his books is a small cockroach,
but he
did not formally name the species. The
image is
similar to the very common species
Phyllodromica
maculata, that at the time was not yet
scientifically described. However, the
image is
simplified and the descriptive text is
inadequate, and Schaeffer obviously did
not keep
a specimen for later reference.
Nevertheless,
Goeze recognized that this image showed
a then
new species of cockroach and described
the
cockroach figured by Schaeffer as new
species
Blatta schaefferi. Thus, this taxon does
not
have a physical holotype, but has only
the
iconotype in Schaeffer´s work. Bohn
and
Chladek (2011) argue that the
species
figured by Schaeffer is indeed a
specimen of the
species currently called Phyllodromica
maculata.
Thus, Blatta schaefferi would be the
senior name
of this species, but Bohn
and
Chladek (2011) suggest that the
older
name is a nomen dubium and should not be
used,
and I agree with this notion.
Unfortunately, because the identity of
the
"schaefferi" taxon has been unclear for
so long,
the name has been incorrectly applied to
several
eastern European Phyllodromica
populations. Bohn
and
Chladek (2011) described two of
these
populations as new species,
Phyllodromica
latipennis and Phyllodromica variabilis
(that
both do not occur in Germany) and a
third
separate species had already been
described
before, Phyllodromica marani (that also
does not
occur in Germany).
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