Cetonia (Eucetonia) kolbei Curti, 1914

Vitali, Francesco, 2019, Catalogue of the types of the Scarabaeidae in the National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg (Coleoptera), ZooKeys 814, pp. 95-114 : 106

Cetonia (Eucetonia) kolbei Curti, 1914 Figure 12

Cetonia (Eucetonia) kolbei Curti, 1914: 125 (type locality: "Cina, Tsingtau, Linkun").

Syntypes.

Tsingtau / Prof. Hoffmann // Juni // det. Curti / Kolbei m[ihi] // Eucetonia Kolbei Curti [handwritten by Kolbe?] // Acquisition du Musée / 2352a 1920 // 14220, 1ex.; ditto, Acquisition du Musée / 2352b 1920 // 14221, 1 ex.

Remarks.

Both specimens did not have the labels of type but the labels "det. Curti / Kolbei m[ihi]" clearly indicate type material. Curti (1914) described this species from an uncertain number of specimens coming from Tsingtau and originally preserved in the Königliches Museum (now Altes Museum) Berlin. The type locality, currently Tsingtao or Quingdao (Shandong), was a German colony from 1897 to 1919.

Even if not reported in the original description, the types were collected by a certain "Prof. Hoffmann", which should not be confused with the best-known professor William E. Hoffmann of Lingnan University, Canton (1896-1989). Ten persons were named Hoffmann in the list of the German military present in Tsingtao in that period ( Schmidt 2018), but Heinrich Fritz August Wilhelm Hoffmann (1875-1950) is the only professor among them. A medical officer in Tsingtao since February 1913, he was interned in China after the Japanese occupation in November 1914 and released in June 1915. The description occurred in the meeting of the Section Coleopterology of 18 February 1914; thus, the types were certainly collected in June 1913 and sent to Hermann J. Kolbe, curator of the Museum, before the onset of WWI.

Eucetonia , originally described as genus ( Schoch 1894), was considered a synonym of Cetonia ( Arrow 1910) or again as a genus ( Schürhoff 1942). However, the combination " Eucetonia kolbei " was used only by Lucas (1918).