Patatra mathani Soula, 2008

Moore, Matthew R., Jameson, Mary L., Garner, Beulah H., Audibert, Cedric, Smith, Andrew B. T. & Seidel, Matthias, 2017, Synopsis of the pelidnotine scarabs (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Rutelinae, Rutelini) and annotated catalog of the species and subspecies, ZooKeys 666, pp. 1-349 : 1

Patatra mathani Soula, 2008

Patatra mathani Soula, 2008: 40 [original combination].

Distribution.

BRAZIL: Pará ( Soula 2008, 2009).

Types.

According to Soula (2008), the holotype and only known specimen of Patatra mathani (which represents a monotypic genus) was from the Oberthur Collection, and thus should have been deposited in the MNHN. However, a search for the holotype was unable to find the specimen. According to A. Mantilleri (MNHN), the specimen was not deposited at MNHN (pers. comm from A. Mantilleri, Aug. 2016).

Remarks.

This species was described based on one male specimen (at MNHN). Soula (2008, 2009) stated that the species possessed characters of both pelidnotine and anticheirine scarabs, and the species was ultimately classified in among the pelidnotine scarabs ( Soula 2011). Verbatim descriptions of this taxon in two separate works ( Soula 2008, 2009) created a double case of homonymy. To stabilize the nomenclature, replacement names were proposed for both the genus and the species ( Moore and Jameson 2013), but this was incorrect and only further confused the issue. Both names, Neopatatra Moore and Jameson and Neopatatra synonyma Moore and Jameson, are unavailable, invalid names because they were not used as valid names in their original publication. Because the Soula names are objective synonyms with the same type species and type specimen, the junior synonyms will never be in a position where they will be considered a separate taxon in need of a replacement names.