Liatongus mergacerus (Hope, 1831)

Sarkar, Subhankar Kumar & Kharel, Bhim Prasad, 2020, A first faunistic study on the tribe Oniticellini Kolbe, 1905 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) of Baikunthapur Tropical Forest of the Himalayan foothills, West Bengal, India, Biodiversity Data Journal 8, pp. 57444-57444 : 57444

Liatongus mergacerus (Hope, 1831)

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordedBy: Bhim Prasad Kharel; sex: 1 male; Location: country: India; countryCode: IND; stateProvince: West Bengal; municipality: Jalpaiguri; locality: Apalchand range of Baikunthapur Forest ; verbatimCoordinates: 26°46'22.01"N, 88°37'22.38"E; Event: samplingProtocol: Random sampling; eventDate: 26-Oct-18; habitat: Mammalian dung; Record Level: collectionCode: ZE-KU_BKF06; basisOfRecord: Preserved Specimen Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordedBy: Subhankar Kumar Sarkar; sex: 1 male; Location: country: India; countryCode: IND; stateProvince: West Bengal; municipality: Jalpaiguri; locality: Targhera range of Baikunthapur Forest ; verbatimCoordinates: 26°48'56.20"N, 88°37'30.40"E; Event: samplingProtocol: Pitfall trap; eventDate: 08-Jun-18; habitat: Mammalian dung; Record Level: collectionCode: ZE-KU_BKF07; basisOfRecord: Preserved Specimen Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordedBy: Subhankar Kumar Sarkar and Bhim Prasad Kharel; sex: 3 males; Location: country: India; countryCode: IND; stateProvince: West Bengal; municipality: Jalpaiguri; locality: Ambari range of Baikunthapur Forest ; verbatimCoordinates: 26°41'1.15"N, 88°34'33.10"E; Event: samplingProtocol: Hand picking from dung pats; eventDate: 22-Jun-18; habitat: Mammalian dung; Record Level: collectionCode: ZE-KU_BKF08, ZE-KU_BKF09, ZE-KU_BKF10; basisOfRecord: Preserved Specimen

Ecological interactions

Feeds on

Mammalian dung

Distribution

BHUTAN; INDIA: Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal; NEPAL; SUDAN ( Biswas and Chatterjee 1985, Löbl and Smetana 2006, Sewak 2006, Schoolmeesters 2020).

Diagnosis

This species can be distinguished from other Liatongus species by the following combination of characters (Fig. 2 b): Length 9 mm, breadth 5.5 mm; upper surface dark brown and opaque; head finely punctured with the sides round, forehead bears a strong, basally flat and backwardly curved, erect horn, with its tip diverged into two slender and sharply pointed processes; clypeus finely punctured and separated from the forehead by a feebly curved carina; pronotum very deeply and broadly excavated in its anterior part with the cavity smooth, shining and posteriorly elevated into a strong, straight and compressed, blade-like horn, with its tip rounded; elytra deeply striate and strongly punctured, intervals slightly convex; metasternal shield very smooth and bears a mid-longitudinal groove; pygidium minutely punctured. Genitalia: Phallobase elongate, broad at base and heavily sclerotised (Fig. 3 c); parameres ventrally curved, broad and round at base, laterally extended into a hook-like process, apically sinuate with the tips round and blunt (Fig. 3 d).