Cantao africanus Horváth, 1893

Kment, Petr & Rédei, Dávid, 2018, A revision of the types of Heteroptera species described by Géza Horváth based on specimens from collections of Ladislav Duda and Emil Holub, Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae 58 (1), pp. 275-295 : 285

Cantao africanus Horváth, 1893

Cantao africanus Horváth, 1893: 256 (original description).

Cantao Africanus : LETHIERRY & SEVERIN (1893): 263 (catalogue).

Cantao africanus : SCHOUTEDEN (1903): 28 (repeated original description); SCHOUTEDEN (1906): 137 (comparison with C. pulcher sp. nov.); SCHOUTEDEN (1909): 31 (list); MCDONALD (1988):289 (nomen dubium, comment on possible mislabelling and synonymy); TSAI et al. (2011): 100 (nomen dubium).

Cantao (Cantao) africanus : SCHOUTEDEN (1904a):18 (catalogue, suspected mislabelling); KIRKALDY (1909b): 307 (catalogue).

Type locality. ‘ Congo, communic. Dom. L. DUDA.’ (in error?). The locality refers to the region of the Congo River, currently covering the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and the province of Cabinda, Angola.

Type material. SYNTYPE (S): Lost ( SCHOUTEDEN 1903).

Current status. Nomen dubium (cf. TSAI et al. 2011).

Distribution. ‘Congo’ ( HORVÁTH 1893) (in error?).

Remarks. This species was described based on an unspecified number of male(s) ( HORVÁTH 1893). SCHOUTEDEN (1903: 28) claimed that the type material was lost. We also failed to locate any fitting specimen in either HNHM or NMPC.

Cantao Amyot & Serville, 1843 , contains only four species other than C. africanus , three of them distributed in Indomalaya (extending to marginal areas of the Palaearctics), the fourth one in the Australian Region ( TSAI et al. 2011). It is impossible to ascertain the identity of C. africanus from the original description. Since there are records of the common Indomalayan species C. ocellatus (Thunberg, 1784) from Africa, C. africanus is possibly a junior synonym of the latter species (cf. MCDONALD 1988). However, HORVÁTH (1893) explicitly mentioned that its genital capsule lacks the median process characteristic of C. ocellatus, therefore it is not possible to make a conclusive decision, and accordingly, in agreement with MCDONALD (1988), we consider it as a species of unknown identity. It is also possible that the type material was mislabelled and it did not originate from Africa.