Cardiophorus pseudofebriens Buysson, 1912

Németh, T. & Platia, G., 2014, On some Palaearctic click beetles deposited in the Hungarian Natural History Museum, 2 (Coleoptera: Elateridae) *, Zootaxa 3841 (4), pp. 451-490 : 471

Cardiophorus pseudofebriens Buysson, 1912

Cardiophorus varius Cate, Platia et Schimmel, 2002: 50 (syn. n.).

Material examined. 1 specimen, female. Iran: “( Pers.): Ziarat, coll. M. von Pfaundler (det. von Hayek, 1963)“. ( HNHM).

Remarks. The systematic status of this enigmatic species was discussed by Chassain (1979) in his introduction to the first part of the Elateridae fauna of Saudi Arabia. The species was eventually assigned to the genus Cardiophorus on the basis of a paralectotype still with the claws (designated by von Hayek) and preserved in the Museum of Paris. The presence of a specimen identified by C. M. F. von Hayek in the HNHM gives an opportunity to establish the synonymy with C. varius Cate, Platia et Schimmel, 2002 . C. pseudofebriens was described from “Arabian Pétrée”, a locality not easy to define and that probably refers to the north of Sinai Peninsula ( Egypt). Based on this new synonymy the distribution of the species seems to be more extensive: Egypt (Sinai), Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Iran.

Note. Akhter et al. 2011 under Cardiophorus varius Cate, Platia & Schimmel, 2002 recorded this species also from Pakistan. We have some doubts on the true identity of this material.