Aceraius ceylonicus Kuwert, 1891

Bezděk, Aleš, Boucher, Stéphane, Hájek, Jiří & Cas, Biology Centre, 2017, Catalogue of type specimens of beetles (Coleoptera) deposited in the National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic, Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae 57 (1), pp. 279-293 : 284

Aceraius ceylonicus Kuwert, 1891

Acerajus ceylonicus Kuwert, 1891: 163 .

One syntype is deposited in NMPC (ex coll. Nickerl).

SYNTYPE (unsexed specimen): ‘Helfer [hw Kuwert] // Tenasserim / Helfer [hw] // ceylonicus / t. Kuwert / 55 typ! [hw Nickerl] // Nickerl [p] // TYPUS [p, red label, black margin] // ceylonicus / Kuw. / syntype revised [hw] / S. Boucher det. [p] 13 [hw]’.

Current status. Valid species.

Remark. The locality of this syntype does not agree with the original description, which is ‘Ceylon’. Later on, KUWERT (1898b) indicated distribution of this species as ‘ Ceylon, Sikkim’. According to the current knowledge, the species is distributed in Sikkim, but not in Ceylon ( ZANG 1905, GRAVELY 1914). The specimen in NMPC belongs to the same species as the one in Kuwert’s collection in MNHN. Both specimens have the length as given in the original description, and with the same handwritten label ‘Helfer’. There is no doubt that the original locality has been corrected by Kuwert, and that both specimens form the type series. Johann Wilhelm Helfer (1810–1840), an employee of the British East India Company, collected both in northeastern India and Tenasserim, but not in Ceylon. The mislabelling of the specimen might have happened after Helfer’s sudden death in Andaman Islands in 1840, and the relocation of his collection to Europe.