Canthon nigellus Schmidt, 1922

Rosa, Cecilia Lozano De La, Cupello, Mario & Vaz-De-Mello, Fernando Z., 2024, The dung beetles of Venezuela (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae): catalogue and updated distribution, European Journal of Taxonomy 959 (1), pp. 1-272 : 214

Canthon nigellus Schmidt, 1922

Canthon nigellus Schmidt, 1922: 88 (original description). Type locality: said by Schmidt (1922) to be “Oriba”, supposedly in Venezuela, and the Brazilian state of Pará. But see Remarks below. Name-bearing type: a single known syntype (NHRS), examined by FZVM.

Distribution

Uncertain. Possibly Venezuela and Brazil (see Remarks below).

Literature records

Schmidt 1922: 77, 88 ( Venezuela: “Oriba” [unknown locality]). — Balthasar, 1939a: 215 ( Venezuela). — Blackwelder 1944: 200 ( Venezuela). — Pereira & Martínez 1960: 44 ( Venezuela). — Vulcano & Pereira 1964: 639 ( Venezuela); 1967: 561 ( Venezuela). — Krajcik 2012: 64 ( Venezuela). — Vaz-de-Mello & Cupello, 2018: 60 ( Venezuela?). — Silva & Valois 2019: 301–302 ( Venezuela).

Remarks

The only author who has claimed to have examined specimens from Venezuela was Schmidt (1922), who described the species from material said to be, in his words, from “Oriba ( Venezuela), Pará ( Brasilien)”. Every other author who has indicated the presence of C. nigellus in Venezuela has done so following Schmidt. Whereas “Pará” is clearly the Brazilian state of this name (perhaps, more specifically, its capital city, Belém, which used to be called by this name by older naturalists such as H.W. Bates and A.R. Wallace [ Mello-Leitão 1944; Papavero 1973]), the identity of the “Oriba” locality is most unclear. Though the single syntype so far found in collections is precisely from there, unlike Schmidt’s text, its label does not mention Venezuela, but rather situates the “Oriba” locality more generically in the Amazon, with no specified country (see Vaz-de-Mello & Cupello 2018). Since we cannot tell from where Schmidt (1922) got the information that the locality is Venezuelan, we consider the presence of the species in the country as uncertain. Paynter (1982) mentions no locality called “Oriba” in his Venezuela gazetteer. As for the alleged presence in Brazil, we also deem it suspicious and possibly in error since no syntypes from “Pará” were located by Vaz-de-Mello & Cupello (2018) in their study of the Schmidt Canthon types. As no specimens other than the syntypes have been so far identified in the literature as belonging to this species, for the time being, the precise range of C. nigellus will remain dubious. The only aspect that, thanks to the label of the single known type specimen, seems certain is that the species is present in the Amazon, possibly an endemic to the region.