Plateumaris sulcifrons Weise, 1900

Geiser, Elisabeth, 2023, Revision of the Palaearctic species of the genus Plateumaris C. G. Thomson, 1859 (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Donaciinae), ZooKeys 1177, pp. 167-233 : 167

Plateumaris sulcifrons Weise, 1900 syn. nov.

Type locality.

Turkey, Kahramanmaraş province: Süleymanlı “Zeytun” [old name].

Type material.

Holotype: Turkey • 1 ♀; Kahramanmaraş province, Süleymanlı “Zeytun” [old name]; 37°53'N, 36°50'E; O. Staudinger leg. Probably collected in 1872 (see below for details). Depository unknown.

Remarks.

Askevold (1991) declared P. sulcifrons as a "probable new synonymy" for P. rustica . The holotype (♀) is missing but the analysis of the elaborate original description (see Geiser and Geiser 2023) indicates that the characters of P. sulcifrons are within the variation range of P. rustica characters (Table 4 ). Weise indicates a range of [body] length: 8-9 mm and colour variation in the antennae and legs. This suggests that he had examined more than one (female) specimen. Since 1900 the name P. sulcifrons is mentioned in almost all catalogues and identification keys for the (West) Palaearctic, but no new records were published.

Besides, there was a confusion about the locus typicus. Weise (1900) published only: "Zeitun (Staudinger)". This sparse note of the collection site led to misinterpretations: “Zeitun” is correctly assigned to Asia Minor ( Reitter 1920; Winkler 1930), but it was misinterpreted by Goecke (1960) as “Żejtun”, a town in the east of Malta. Henceforward it was mentioned as a species from Malta ( Jolivet 1970; Borowiec 1984; Askevold 1991; Silfverberg 2010; Warchałowski 2010). This location error confirmed the opinion that P. sulcifrons is probably endemic to Malta, therefore missing further records were less suspect.

Otto Staudinger (1830-1900) was a German entomologist who went on numerous collecting trips or promoted them, but insects were not collected in Malta, neither on his own journeys nor on his commissioned trips. In 1872 he visited the Cilician Taurus ( Anonymous 1901; Wikipedia [05.10.2022]). Therefore, “Zeitun” mentioned in Weise (1900) is actually “Zeytun” district (now Süleymanlı) of today’s Kahramanmaraş province of Turkey ( Ekiz et al. 2020). Different spellings and change of geographical names also did not help to clarify this case.

Unfortunately, the first description does not indicate where these specimens are stored. It is unlikely that Weise returned the type(s) to Staudinger, who was then working on his Lepidoptera Catalogues in his last years. Weise’s private collection and especially the Chrysomelidae part are stored in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin (ZMHB), but no Plateumaris specimen labelled " Plateumaris sulcifrons " could be found there, despite the search by J. Frisch in 2019. I screened the Plateumaris collection in 2023 but found no specimen that could be considered the type.

Like other species, where only the type specimen is known, P. sulcifrons was suspected to be a synonym of a well-known species. Weise wrote that it is similar to P. rustica and P. affinis . Askevold (1991) synonymised P. affinis with P. rustica . He noticed that the characters Weise mentioned are typical for P. rustica and suggested that P. sulcifrons may be conspecific. Warchałowski (2003) treated P. sulcifrons also as synonym to P. rustica in his key of the Chrysomelidae of the Europe and the Mediterranean area. However, he treated it as valid species, although doubtful, in his key of the Chrysomelidae of the Palaearctic region ( Warchałowski 2010). In Silfverberg (2010) it was listed as valid species from Malta. The locus typicus was corrected to Turkey in Löbl and Smetana (2013).

Unfortunately, I could not examine the type specimen. To confirm the arguments of Askevold (1991) with more details, the characters mentioned by Weise (1900) are compared with the characters of P. rustica in Table 4 .

The characters which should distinguish P. sulcifrons from P. rustica are either the same or within the variation range of P. rustica . Therefore P. sulcifrons is a synonym of P. rustica . This was also mentioned in Ekiz et al. (2020) and in Geiser and Bezděk (in press), but without the reason provided here.