---

Hi Pierre,

Up till 1978 there were an awful lot of Stylops species described in the (wester) palearctic, but all either based on a male specimen or on female, only a very few on both. Everytime they found a new Andrena species stylopised, they described it as a new species. Ragnar Kinzelbach has examined a lot of material, males as well as females and that the differences overlapped and the females and males were quite inseparable from onanother. Wheras other species, from other hosts like Homoptera and other Aculeate hosts are clearly different. Therefore he synonymized all Stylops species known from Andrena's, I believe only the western Palearctic ones. For I know there is at least one (probably more) other species known from the Nearctic.
I have no idea if anyone has ever compared S. melittae with species outside the palearctic. I am not really into the nomenclature and systematics of Strepsiptera, I have only written a few faunistical papers on the group, and follow Kinzelbach in his opinion, for the arguments and the numerous drawings he gives on the different Stylops 'taxa' are quite convincing to me and therefore I only consider S. melittae in Europe.

Best wishes,

John