Macroderes spectabilis Péringuey, 1901

Abdalla, Ishtiag H., Deschodt, Christian M., Scholtz, Clarke H. & Sole, Catherine L., 2018, An update to the taxonomy of the genus Macroderes Westwood 1842 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) with descriptions of new species from South Africa, Zootaxa 4504 (1), pp. 41-75 : 72

Macroderes spectabilis Péringuey, 1901

Macroderes spectabilis Péringuey, 1901: 300 ; Janssens 1939: 27; Ferreira 1969: 322; Frolov & Scholtz 2005: 392.

Type locality. Cape Colony (no exact locality) .

Type material examined. None. Type specimen may be lost, it was not found at any South African museum .

Remarks. We have not seen the type specimen of this species at any of the South African museum throughout our study, thus we support Frolov & Scholtz (2005) assumption that the type specimen of this species may be lost. However, Péringuey in his original description (1901: 300) mentioned that the length of the specimen is 12.75 mm and the width is 8.5 mm. The species is different from its congeners in that it has a remarkable retuse and lobate pronotum in front and the absence of elytral stria 9. In his description, Péringuey (1901) added that the species has dense, equally distant and close pronotal punctures with the presence of deep impression antero-laterally.

The absence of elytral stria 9 is not known among Macroderes species, however, other above mentioned characteristics put the species in close similarity to M. bias . Frolov & Scholtz (2005) suggested that the species might be “an aberrant specimen” of M. bias and attributed the absence of elytral stria 9 to uncompleted separation of the striae from each other.