Hypocaccus (Hypocaccus) sinae (Marseul, 1862)

Lackner, Tomas & Leschen, Richard A. B., 2017, A monograph of the Australopacific Saprininae (Coleoptera, Histeridae), ZooKeys 689, pp. 1-263 : 35-40

Hypocaccus (Hypocaccus) sinae (Marseul, 1862) Figs 161, 162-173, 174-182, 756

Saprinus sinae Marseul, 1862: 496.

Saprinus vernulus Blackburn, 1903: 108 - syn. n.

Type locality.

China: Shanghai.

Type material examined.

Saprinus sinae Marseul, 1862: Lectotype, present designation: ♂, mounted on tip of mounting card, with genitalia extracted, dismembered and placed in a separate plastic slide under the specimen, right antennal club, right protarsus and right hind-leg missing, with the following labels: tiny, dark blue rectangular label, followed by: " Saprinus / Sinae m. / Shanghai / Dej. 63" (round, yellow label, written); followed by: “Shanghai” (written); followed by: "52 (158a) Saprinus / Sinae m.60 / Shanghai" (written); followed by: "MUSEUM PARIS / COLL. / DE MARSEUL 1890" (printed); followed by: “TYPE” (red-printed label); followed by: " Saprinus sinae / Marseul, 1862 / LECTOTYPE 2014 / des. T. Lackner" (red label, written) (MNHN). This species was described from unknown number of specimens and the lectotype designation fixes the identity of the species.

Saprinus vernulus Blackburn, 1903: Lectotype, present designantion: ♀, mounted on a card with “♀” (printed), followed by: “7249” (mount card with a red number, printed); followed by: "N.S. Wales" (printed); followed by: "K. 270214" (printed); followed by: " Hypocaccus / vernulus / Cotype" (written); followed by: " Hypocaccus / vernulus Bl." (written); followed by: “SYNTYPE” (yellow label, written); followed by: " Saprinus vernulus / Blackburn, 1903 / LECTOTYPE des. / T. Lackner 2016" (red label, written) (AMS). This specimen has been described based on unknown number of specimens and the lectotype designation fixes the identity of the species.

Additional material examined.

AUSTRALIA. New South Wales: 2 specs., re-mounted on a single pin, with the same labels as the lectotype, (and certainly from the same collection - D. Smith pers. comm.) except the original mount with red number “7248” instead of “7249” and with “K270229” instead of "K. 270214" of the lecto type (AMS). 2 ♂♂, without further data (MAMU); 9 specs., New South Wales, without further data (SAMA); 3 specs., Sydney, Lea (SAMA). South Australia: 3 specs., Adelaide, Griffith (SAMA).

Biology.

A typical littoral psammophile found on beaches.

Distribution.

Described from Shanghai (China), distributed along the coasts of China, Indonesia, Russian Far East, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Australia ( Mazur 2011; present paper). Reported also from Afghanistan by Thérond (1969) together with the preceding species. From the Australopacific Region found only in Australia (New South Wales and South Australia; Fig. 756).

Remarks.

Blackburn (1903: 108) mentioned 'distinctly green colour in combination with elytra having a very strong external subhumeral stria’ as the main distinguishing characters between H. vernulus and H. sinae . Since the external morphological characters of many Saprininae species are known to be intra-specifically rather variable, we assign the characters used by Blackburn for the separation of H. vernulus from H. sinae as intra-specific variation and synonymize the two species. A single syntype of Saprinus vernulus Blackburn, 1903 (currently Hypocaccus (Hypocaccus) vernulus ) housed at ANIC has been inspected and we can herewith conclude that it is conspecific with the species Hypocaccus (Hypocaccus) sinae (Marseul, 1862); thus Hypocaccus (Hypocaccus) vernulus Blackburn, 1903 = Hypocaccus (Hypocaccus) sinae (Marseul, 1862) syn. n. Hypocaccus (H.) sinae is above included in the key to the Australopacific species of Hypocaccus that separates it from the related Hypocaccus (H.) brasiliensis . We chose not to fully re-describe Hypocaccus (H.) sinae here, leaving its re-description to the revision of the genus Hypocaccus . For the sake of the better species recognition, however, we decided to depict it here, including its male terminalia.