Scarabaeus (Scarabaeolus) palemo, Olivier, 1789

Zidek, Jiri & Pokorný, Svatopluk, 2018, New species of the Scarabaeus subgenus Scarabaeolus Balthasar, with a review of the subgenus (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae: Scarabaeini), Insecta Mundi 611, pp. 1-35 : 19-20

S. (Scarabaeolus) palemo Olivier, 1789

Scarabaeus palemo Olivier 1789: 187 , pl. 27.234. Olivier 1790: 175; MacLeay 1819: 56; Janssens 1940: 16, 36 pl. 1.4; zur Strassen 1961: 240; 1967: 137, fig. 3, 8a–c; Ferreira 1972: 51, pl. 11.1; Zidek and Pokorný 2004: 17; 2005: 1; Deschodt et al. 2015: 521, 523, fig. 5D, 10.

ST—MNHN, from Senegal and Cape of Good Hope . Angola , Benin, Burkina Faso, DRC, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Namibia , RSA, Senegal , Zimbabwe (some records are probably misidentifications).

Length 10–16 mm.

Scarabaeus morbillosus Fabricius, 1792: 63 ; 1801: 56 (as Ateuchus ); MacLeay 1821: 503; Shipp 1895: 221 (as Parateuchus gen. n.); Janssens 1940: 36 (syn.); zur Strassen 1967: 137; Ferreira 1972: 51; Zidek and Pokorný 2004: 17; 2005: 1–2, fig. 1.

ST(5)— ZMUC, from “ Guinea ” (actually from Ghana, see Moretto and Génier 2015: 4).

Zidek and Pokorný (2004, 2005) erred in following Janssens (1940) who stated that Fabricius described the species as Ateuchus , when in fact he originally (1792) placed it in Scarabaeus and only subsequently (1801) re-assigned it to Ateuchus Weber, 1801 (in Fabricius 1801 the Ateuchus section starts on p. 54). The name Ateuchus was misapplied by Shipp (1895) to five species subsequently assigned by Janssens (1940) to his new genus Kheper .

The S. morbillosus = S. palemo synonymy is conditional on provenience of the syntypes, which makes the distribution of S. palemo uncertain—see discussion in the above Review section.