Gromphas aeruginosa ( Perty, 1830 )

Cupello, Mario, 2024, The genus Gromphas Dejean, 1836 (Coleoptera, Scarabaeinae): nomenclature, distribution, and conservation, including a contribution to the debate on electronic publications in zoology, Zoosystema 46 (2), pp. 23-59 : 33

Gromphas aeruginosa ( Perty, 1830)

Onitis aeruginosus Perty, 1830: 39 , pl. 8, fig. 8 [31st December 1830].

Gromphas aeruginosa – Sturm 1843: 108.

NAME-BEARING TYPE. — Lectotype (male), designated by Scherer (1983: 298), ZMS.

TYPE LOCALITY. — Brazil: the Amazon rainforest, somewhere visited by Spix and Martius along the Amazon River , the Japurá , the lower Madeira , or the Rio Negro (see Papavero 1971 for a map with these places indicated) (see discussion below).

ETYMOLOGY. — A Latin first-class adjective in the nominative case meaning ‘rusty’, ‘covered with verdigris’, and, by extension, ‘greenish’, ‘verdigris green’ or ‘dark green’ ( Lewis & Short 1891; Brown 1954; Glare 1968 -1982; Papavero 1994). Though not originally explained, the name makes an obvious reference to the greenish metallic colouration of many individuals of the species, including those in the type series, a characteristic that Perty (1830) described as ‘ obscure viridi-metallicus ’.

DISTRIBUTION. — The Amazon Basin in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia, especially in sandbanks, floodplains and natural savannas, with southern incursions into the dry Chiquitano forests of eastern Bolivia and the Bañados de Izozog wetlands (‘ Río Parapetí’) of the southern Bolivian Dry Chaco. The species is also known from a sole locality in the upper Magdalena River Valley, the town of Gigante (Huila, Colombia), separated from the Amazon by the Cordillera Oriental, the eastern branch of the Colombian Andes. It is unclear whether this population is somehow connected to those in the Amazon across the Andes or represents a geographical isolate. If the latter, then the question is raised as to whether this Gigante population is a relict from a time when the species was more widely ranged and skirted the Cordillera Oriental or whether it is somehow the result of jump dispersal across the Andean mountains.