Canthidium melanocephalum (Olivier, 1789)

Cupello, Mario, 2018, On the types species of the New World dung beetle genus Canthidium Erichson, 1847 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), with an annotated checklist of species, Zootaxa 4388 (4), pp. 451-486 : 476

Canthidium melanocephalum (Olivier, 1789)

Scarabaeus melanocephalus Olivier, 1789: 173 , Melolontha plate 2, fig. 18 [transferred to Canthidium by Harold 1867a: 29. Olivier (1789) remarked that the inclusion of S. melanocephalus figure in a plate with Melolontha species instead of one with other Scarabaeus was a mistake]. Type locality: Unknown [originally cited by Olivier (1789) as being the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, but, as noted earlier by Matthews (1966), this record is certainly erroneous since no Canthidium species are known to occur in the Antilles. The collector of the type series, according to Olivier (1789), was the French planter Barthélemy de Badier (1740?–1789). Badier lived for several years in Guadeloupe ( Bourguet 2005), but also received specimens from other French territories in the Caribbean and South America (see Lacépède 1789: 121, footnote b). Harold (1867a) ignored Olivier’s original locality and noted that this “fairly common species” occurred exclusively in Brazil. Harold’s (1867a) position was followed in Harold (1869a) and Gillet (1911), but Blackwelder (1944) revisited the matter and considered the presence in Brazil as dubious. Finally, Vaz-de-Mello (2000) did not include C. melanocephalum in his checklist of the Brazilian dung beetles and therefore, both the type locality and the geographical distribution of this species are dubious]. Type material: Location of syntypes unknown, possibly in the MNHN [according to Olivier (1789), the type series was donated to him by Badier. Since part of the Olivier collection still survives in the MNHN ( Horn & Kahle 1936; Evenhuis 1997b), it is possible that at least some syntypes of S. melanocephalus are housed there]. Distribution: Unknown [see comments above on the type locality].