About the Elm Seed Bug
Arocatus melanocephalus, the elm seed bug, is a Heteroptera in the family Lygaeidae. The species was initially described by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1798, and Maximilian Spinola designated it to be the type species of the genus Arocatus in 1837. This bug is native to Europe but has been introduced to North America.
The Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius named this species in 1798, placing it in the genus Lygaeus. When the Italian entomologist Maximilian Spinola named the genus Arocatus in 1837, he designated Fabricius's Lygaeus melanocephalus as its type species. In 1999, Jean Péricart designated a female lectotype in the University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum.
Lygaeus pruinosus, a nomen nudum referring to this species, was named by Eduard Friedrich Eversmann in 1837. Vasily Evgrafovich Yakovlev synonymized this name with A. melanocephalus in 1875. The French entomologist Charles Jean-Baptiste Amyot referred to this species as Arocatus using his system of uninonial nomenclature in a work later invalidated by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.
As of 2017, three subspecies are recognized: the nominate subspecies... Wikipedia →