Eremobothynus cornutus ( Steinheil, 1872 )

Grossi, Paschoal Coelho & Abadie, Esteban Ignácio, 2008, A new species of Eremobothynus Ohaus (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae) from Argentina, with notes on Eremobothynus cornutus (Steinheil), Zootaxa 1733, pp. 57-60 : 59

Notes on Eremobothynus cornutus ( Steinheil, 1872)

This species was described by Steinheil (1872) based on a single male and was originally placed in the genus Scaptophilus Burmeister, 1847 , which was later synonymized with Bothynus Hope, 1837 . Ohaus (1910) described the genus Eremobothynus to accommodate this species. Ohaus (1910) also described the female of E. cornutus , and mentioned that the three males he studied had a more developed horn than the “female” he examined. It is very probable that he was actually describing a very small male and mistook it for a female.

During the course of our studies, we examined a large number of male and female specimens of E. cornutus from the second author’s collection. All females examined were completely unarmed, with no horns or tubercles on the head ( Fig. 4 ). Therefore, all identification keys (e.g., Endrödi 1969, Endrödi 1985, Ratcliffe 1981, Ratcliffe & Hardy 2005) must be corrected to indicate that only males in E. cornutus have a frontal horn ( Fig. 3 ), and that the pronotum is convex in females ( Fig. 4 ) and not declivous as in males.

Figures

FIGURES 1 – 4. Eremobothynus spp.: 1 - 2: E. hirsutus sp. nov., holotype, dorsal and lateral views; 3: E. cornutus, male dorsal view; 4: female head and pronotum anterolateral view.