Dromica bertinae C.A. Dohrn, 1891

Schüle, Peter, 2007, Revision of the genus Dromica. Part IV. Species closely related to Dromica albivittis (Coleoptera: Cicindelidae), African Invertebrates 48 (2), pp. 233-244 : 243

Dromica bertinae C.A. Dohrn, 1891 , nomen dubium

In his description, C.A. Dohrn dedicated D. bertinae to Berta Heinemann, a teacher who had been living for some years in South Africa (Transvaal) and who had brought dozens of beetles to Germany, including the single female specimen of D. bertinae . Without examining the type specimen, Péringuey (1893) presumed a synonymy with D. albivittis . This presumption was confirmed later by Horn (1896) after he studied the type specimen. Based on the original publication, the name D. bertinae C.A. Dohrn cannot be assigned unambiguously to any of the known taxa within the Dromica albivittis complex. Parts of the collections of Carl August Dohrn and his son Heinrich Dohrn, originally deposited in the Stettin Museum of Natural History ( Dohrn 1892), were destroyed during World War II, and their fragments were later moved to the Warsaw Zoological Museum ( Basilewsky 1957). Upon my request, neither the museum staff at the Warsaw Museum (Tomaszewska, pers. comm.) nor at MRAC, MNHN, BMNH, or DEI, could find any type material. Kleine’s (1944) unpublished list of material, received from the former Stettin Museum, does not mention the name D. bertinae . Remarkably, in his publication on Dohrn ‘type’ material received for study from the Warsaw Museum, Basilewsky (1957) wrote some notes regarding the ‘male type specimen’ of D. bertinae . The species description, however, was based on a single female ( Dohrn 1891). Hence, Basilewsky’s note most probably does not refer to Dohrn’s type specimen. In DEI, one female specimen has the handwritten label ‘Transvaal’. The handwriting differs from Dohrn’s and Horn usually attached an additional ‘type’ label when he studied a type specimen bearing no original type label (Behne pers. comm.). Following the ICZN (1999), I prefer to set aside D. bertinae C.A. Dohrn as a nomen dubium.