Onthophagus striatulus striatulus (Palisot de Beauvois, 1809) ( Howden & Cartwright, 1963 )

Rossini, M., Vaz-De-Mello, F. Z. & Zunino, M., 2016, More transcontinental mislabeling in the genus Onthophagus: d’Orbigny’s “ African ” Group 27 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), Zootaxa 4175 (5), pp. 494-500 : 498-499

Onthophagus striatulus striatulus (Palisot de Beauvois, 1809) ( Howden & Cartwright, 1963) ( Fig. 1 B, G)

Onthophagus gibber d’Orbigny 1905: 493 syn. nov. ( Fig. 1 D, I)

Onthophagus gibberosus d’Orbigny 1905: 492 syn. nov. ( Fig. 1 E, L)

Type locality. South Carolina

Distribution. Central and eastern USA ( Howden & Cartwright, 1963).

Remarks. Palisot de Beauvois (hereafter referred to as PB) was a French botanist and considered, together with F. V. Melsheimer, one of the first entomologists who collected and described insects in North America, especially in Hispaniola and USA. PB arrived in Haiti in 1791–1792 on board a slave ship coming from the Gulf of Guinea. Indeed, he was hired as the main naturalist in the French expedition led by Captain Landolphe and which aimed to establish a new trading settlement in Oware, a territory between the current Benin and Nigeria. In 1791, the French colony was invaded by the British army and the spread of an epidemic of yellow fever compelled a debilitated PB to leave Africa.

PB spent the next 12 years in North America, collecting in Haiti, St. Domingue and USA, and obtaining financial support by the French Minister Pierre Adet. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, which became an important means to communicate his own natural history observations. PB returned finally to France at the beginning of 19th century, when the revolutionary government decided to restore his citizenship, but on the way back his last collections, made during 1793–1798, were destroyed in a shipwreck off the coast of Nova Scotia ( Merrill, 1936).

Natural history specimens collected by PB are now very rare in public collections, as most of them have been lost over the years: “ in his adventurous years that he spent away from France he lost, through no fault of his own, three great collections of natural history material that he had laboriously assembled in Africa, in Haiti and in the eastern United States ” ( Merrill, 1936: 899). A. Chevrolat acquired part of the PB’s collection and received a second lot of specimens from A. Serville (Chevrolat, 1852). Importantly, among these specimens, it is very likely that Chevrolat obtained also the type of O. striatulus (see pp. 630 and 642). According to Horn et al. (1990) part of the PB’s specimens have been incorporated in the Neervoort Van de Poll collection (via A. Chevrolat), but it is also important to point out that the greater part of the dung beetles formerly included in the Chevrolat collection is now deposited at the Museum für Tierkunde of Dresden (Felsche collection). Again, Bousquet (2016, and herein cited literature) states that some of the PB’s specimens might have been incorporated in the Dejean’s collection, who either bought or received this material from Palisot de Beauvois himself (see p. iii of the “Avertissement” of the Dejean’s Catalogue first edition, 1821). Over the years, Dejean’s collection was divided in lots and acquired by several Institutes and private collectors, and the MNHN of Paris currently holds the bulk of this natural history collection. Part of it was bought by M. Spinola and today housed at the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali of Turin. But no potential type specimens of O. striatulus seem to be deposited here ( Giachino, 1982).

As already pointed out by Howden & Cartwright (1963), the colour pattern of O. striatulus is highly variable within its area of distribution, with populations having body single-coloured (dark green to reddish brown), while others have elytra bicolored (with distinct paler spots at the base and apex). Nevertheless, these variations were considered to occur within the same species (i.e. O. striatulus ). In the same work, according to morphological and biogeographic evidence, O. floridanus Blatchley, 1928 is downgraded to subspecific rank under O. striatulus . Indeed, although morphologically very similar to O. striatulus , specimens collected in Florida, Atlantic coast of Georgia and southern South Carolina have body completely black and elytral sculpture not alutaceous.

We carefully examined the external morphology and male genital organs of O. striatulus and O. floridanus (including the primary type of the latter) and we decided to maintain the Howden & Cartwright’s taxonomic arrangement.

Over the last two years, we carried out intensive researches and visits to all the European museums mentioned above where it was likely to locate Palisot de Beauvois’ specimens, but none were found. This leads us to believe the types of O. striatulus may have been lost with many other of PB’s specimens.

Therefore, because of the need to define objectively a nominal taxon for Onthophagus striatulus (Palisot de Beauvois, 1809) and preserve the stability of its zoological nomenclature, we designated a male from South Carolina (label details below) as a neotype ( ICZN, 1999: Art. 75). This neotype provides characters to distinguish the nominotypical subspecies from O. striatulus floridanus , such as elytra with paler spots at the base and apex, elytral surface opaque and weakly shining, elytral striae shallow, interstriae flat ( Fig. 1 B). ( ICZN, 1999: Art. 75.3.2;). Furthermore, the neotype eventually defines a type locality for O. striatulus striatulus (Art. 75.3.6), that is “Dovehaven”, 7 mi north-east of Pickens.

The neotype has been selected from the Florida State Collection of Arthropods and is now deposited in the MNHN of Paris ( Fig. 1 B).

Type specimens examined. Of O. striatulus : Neotype (♂ MNHN): 1: “Dovehaven”, 7 mi N.E. of Pickens, S. C., 9.27.1983, H. L. Dozier (printed and handwritten on white label). 2: NEOTYPE, Onthophagus striatulus (Palisot de Beauvois, 1809) des. M. Rossini, 2016 (printed on red label).

Of O. gibber : Holotype (♂ MTD): 1: gibber n. sp. d’Orb. (handwritten in italic on cream label). 2: Coll. C. Felsche, Kauf 20, 1918 (printed on blue label). 3: Grahamstown (printed on blue label). 4: Staatl. Museum für Tierkunde, Dresden (printed on white label). 5: O. gibber (handwritten in italic blue on white label with black border).

Of O. gibberosus : Holotype (♂ MTD): 1: Liberia (handwritten on cream label). 2: gibberosus n. sp. d’Orb. (handwritten on cream label). 3: Coll. C. Felsche, Kauf 20, 1918 (printed on blue label). 4: Typus (printed on red label). 5: Staatl. Museum für Tierkunde, Dresden (printed on white label).

Figures

FIGURE 1. Dorsal habitus and labels of the primary types. A, F: O. bidentatus and O. bicornis. B, G: O. striatulus. C, H: O. semichalcites. D, I: O. gibber. E, L: O. gibberosus. Scale bar: 1 mm.