Metacatharsius convexiusculus ( Shipp, 1897 ) Takano, 2021

Takano, Hitoshi, 2021, Taxonomic notes concerning the genus Catharsius Hope, 1837 (Scarabaeidae Scarabaeinae), Zootaxa 5052 (2), pp. 280-286 : 284

Metacatharsius convexiusculus ( Shipp, 1897) comb. nov.

Copris convexiusculus Shipp, 1897: 450 .

Catharsius convexiusculus ( Shipp, 1897) : Gillet, 1911: 68; Ferreira, 1960: 248; 1972: 264.

There have been a number of recent revisional works in which Shipp’s types could not be located ( Forgie et al. 2002, Silva & Vaz-de-Mello 2015) and although only the Catharsius specimens were studied by the author in MTD, it is likely that the majority of Shipp’s types stated as being in the Tring Museum are found in the Felsche collection housed in MTD. This, however, does not include any species described by Shipp from collections other than Tring; types of Irrorhotides fryi Shipp, 1895 stated in the original description as belonging in the Fry Collection (housed in BMNH) and Spodochalmys poultoni Shipp, 1895 in the Hope Museum (OUMNH) are still preserved in these respective collections.

The reference to the whereabouts of Shipp’s collection in Horn et al. (1990) is likely to refer specifically to his personal collection which was sold at Steven’s Auctioneers to Percy May Bright and henceforth to Tring. It is well known that the majority of the Tring Lepidoptera collection was bequeathed by Lord Walter Rothschild to BMNH but large parts of the Coleoptera collection were sold off and the Coprophaga was purchased by Felsche (see under Tring Museum in Horn et al. (1990: 397)). This is supported by a number of letters from the turn of the 20 th Century in the BMNH archives from Felsche to Karl Jordan, a curator at Tring, discussing prices of beetles such as Heliocopris , Catharsius and Phanaeus . It is through these sales that Shipp’s types have ended up in Felsche’s collection and not in BMNH. Subsequent and recent references to Shipp’s types being deposited in the BMNH collections, such as the unverified reference to the presence of the types of Heliocopris donaldsoni Shipp, 1895 and Heliocopris coriaceus Shipp, 1897 in BMNH by Pokorný et al. (2009), are likely as a result of an assumption made through the Horn et al. (1990) reference.