Nepticula wollofella Gustafsson, 1972 [Invalid]

Study of the slides of the holotypes of Nepticula wollofella Gustafsson, 1972 (Figs. 72–75) and N. mandingella Gustafsson, 1972 (Figs. 70–71), both collected together in Gambia, showed that the genitalia are in fact identical, but the slide of S. mandingella is more squashed, obscuring some of the characters. Gustafsson (1985) gave the shape of the juxta as distinguishing character. The juxta is arrow shaped, with many small spines on the lateral apexes of the arrow head. These were not figured in the original drawing of N. mandingella, but are present in the slide, although difficult to separate from spines on the phallus tube. Because both N. mandingella and N. wollofella were described in the same publication, we determine here as first reviser the relative priority of N. wollofella (ICZN article 24.2) and synonymise N. mandingella. The much better genitalia preparation of N. wollofella was the first criterion and the second one is that the name wollofella has been used again by Gustafsson (1985) when describing the biology of the species as leafminer of Zizyphus. (Van Nieukerken 2016)