Rutela caesarea Gistel, 1857 incertae sedis

Moore, Matthew R., Jameson, Mary L., Garner, Beulah H., Audibert, Cedric, Smith, Andrew B. T. & Seidel, Matthias, 2017, Synopsis of the pelidnotine scarabs (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Rutelinae, Rutelini) and annotated catalog of the species and subspecies, ZooKeys 666, pp. 1-349 : 1

Rutela caesarea Gistel, 1857 incertae sedis

Rutela caesarea Gistel, 1857: 29 [original combination].

Distribution.

COLOMBIA ( Gistel 1857, Blackwelder 1944, Krajcik 2008, Soula 2009).

Remarks.

Gistel (1857) provided only a very short Latin description of this species and some brief notes in German. He described R. caesarea having a polished thorax with fine punctation and elevated striae on the elytra ( Gistel 1857). The tarsi are bluish-green and the specimen has yellow eyes ( Gistel 1857). In German, Gistel (1857) stated that R. caesarea is of similar size to Pelidnota semiaurata Burmeister, but “thinner”. The specimen is also described as having shiny, golden-green reflections ( Gistel 1857). The name R. caesarea Gistel did not appear in catalogs of world Rutelinae ( Ohaus 1918, 1934b, Machatschke 1972, 1974). Blackwelder (1944) was aware of the name and listed it under Rutela in his catalog. Krajcik (2008) listed R. caesarea as a probable synonym of Pelidnota aeruginosa (Linnaeus), a nomen dubium, probably based on the original description’s comparison to P. semiaurata . We think that there is no basis for listing R. caesarea in synonymy at this time because its type specimen, and thus the validity of the species, is unknown to us. Rutela caesarea is listed here as incertae sedis until the type specimen can be found and examined to establish the validity of the species. Gistel’s collection could be deposited at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (Munich, Germany), though Gistel’s specimens were accessioned into the collection without appropriate type labels ( Schülke 2004, Jelínek and Audisio 2009). Gistel’s ruteline types will likely be very difficult to locate and identify.