Phanaeus bonariensis Gory in Guérin-Méneville, 1844 : 79

Maldaner, Maria E., Cupello, Mario, Ferreira, Daniela C. & Vaz-De-Mello, Fernando Z., 2017, Type specimens and names assigned to Coprophanaeus (Megaphanaeus) d’Olsoufieff, 1924, the largest New World dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Phanaeini), Zootaxa 4272 (1), pp. 83-102 : 95

Phanaeus bonariensis Gory in Guérin-Méneville, 1844: 79 .

Type specimen: Unknown to us (see discussion below). Certainly, the description was based on a syntypic series, since Gory (1844) gave several places in Argentina and Paraguay as type locality.

Type locality: ‘ Buénos-Ayres , Corrientes, le Paraguay ’ ( Gory 1844).

Nomenclatural history: In Iconographie du régne animal de G. Cuvier, Guérin-Méneville (1844) discussed about the species today placed in Megaphanaeus and, following his discussion on Phanaeus ensifer , he said ‘Mr. Gory [the French entomologist Hippolyte Louis Gory (1800–1852)] possesses a new species related to this one, but it is quite distinct, we have seen several differences in both sexes; here follows the description he made of it’ (‘ M. Gory possède une espèce nouvelle voisine de celle-ci, mais bien distincte, nous en avons vu plusieurs variétés de sexes divers; voice la description qu’il en faite: ’), and then he presented the description of ‘ Phanaeus Bonariensis , Gory’, from ‘ Buénos-Ayres, Corrientes, le Paraguay ’. According to Article 50.1 of the Code, ‘the author of a name […] is the person who first published it in a way that satisfies the criteria of availability […]’, and Article 50.1.1 says ‘[…] if it is clear from the contents that some person other than an author of the work is alone responsible […] for the name […], then that other person is the author of the name […]’. With the phrase transcript above, Guérin- Méneville (1844) made it clear that Gory was the responsible both for the description and for naming Phanaeus bonariensis , making the latter entomologist its author.

After Gory’s death, his personal collection was scattered throughout different museums in Europe ( Cambefort 2006), but even before some of his specimens seem to have been sent to other collections. For example, Smith (1986) cited a letter dated 1849 where Gory’s brother offered his collection by £300 to the English entomologist Reverend Frederick William Hope (1797–1762). Indeed, specimens coming from Gory’s collection were found in the Hope Entomological Collections, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, where they can be easily recognized by the presence of a small red square label handwritten ‘ G ’ attached to them ( Figure 5 C shows an example) (Darren Mann, curator at the OUMNH, personal communication to MC on the 4th of September, 2016).

Nonetheless, we were unable to find a specimen of the species currently known as C. bonariensis bearing Gory’s label at OUMNH or at any other museum examined. Two apparently mid-nineteenth-century specimens of C. bonariensis from Hope-Westwood collection at OUMNH are potentially part of the type series ( Figure5 A–B), but, as none of them bears a ‘ G ’ label, we prefer to be careful and, by now, we will not consider them as syntypes of Phanaeus bonariensis . Arnaud (2002b) mentioned that the type specimen of P. bonariensis was deposited in the MNHN (although it was not cited as being there in Arnaud’s [1982b] list of the Phanaeini type material housed in the Paris museum). Nonetheless, FZVM spent a year at the MNHN and did not find this putative type there. Therefore, the whereabouts of P. bonariensis type material are unknown to us.

The application of the name bonariensis to the Megaphanaeus species from the Chacoan habitats in Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina has long been well established (e.g., d’Olsoufieff 1924; Edmonds 1972; Arnaud 2002b; Edmonds & Zídek 2010) and is clear from the original description given by Gory (1844), making no neotype designation necessary at the moment. The fact that one of the places of the type locality is ‘ Buenos Ayres ’, which is, in the stricter sense of the word, out of the occurrence area of the species, is not considered by us as relevant, as it may indicate rather a departure port to Europe or a much wider area than a strict locality.

Figures

FIGURE 5. (A – B) Nineteenth-century specimens found at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, potential syntypes of Phanaeus bonariensis. (C) Gory collection’s specimen label.