Scelimena nitidogranulosa Günther, 1938

Lao, Chuangyu, Kasalo, Niko, Gao, Fan, Deng, Weian & Skejo, Josip, 2022, Review of the Chinese species of the genus Scelimena Serville, 1838 (Tetrigidae Scelimeninae: Scelimenini), Zootaxa 5200 (4), pp. 321-343 : 333-334

3. Scelimena nitidogranulosa Günther, 1938

Type locality. PR CHINA: Guangdong [originally ‘Canton’] (Guangzhou) ( Günther 1938)

Type material examined. Photographs of ♀ HT ( Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany) in OSF ( Cigliano et al. 2022) .

Notes. Scelimena guangxiensis may be a synonym of S. nitidogranulosa . Unfortunately, the type specimen of S. nitidogranulosa is in very bad condition; for example, lateral spines are broken. The right spine is completely absent, while the left spine is hanging, but seems to be facing forwards. Thus, in the key, section 3B, we propose that it could in some specimens face forwards. We are thus not able to assess the true identity of S. nitidogranulosa at the moment. In the future, better photographs of the types should be taken, so a decent comparison with S. guangxiensis , its potential synonym could be conducted. Two species have very similar pronotal morphology and colouration and they might be conspecific. In that case, S. nitidogranulosa would have priority over S. guangxiensis .

The misconception stating S. nitidogranulosa has a wide vertex (see for example Deng 2016) originated from Liang & Zheng's (1998) Fauna Sinica, where the specimen reported from Hainan as S. nitidogranulsa in fact represents Platygavialidium sinicum ( Fig. 9 ). This species is the species with the widest vertex within the genus Platygavialidium (more than 2 times wider than a compound eye) and thus cannot be misidentified as any Scelimena species.

Figures

FIGURE 9. Platygavialidium sinicum Günther, 1939 a species wrongly identified as Scelimena nitidogranulosa by Liang & Zheng (1998). (a) Lateral view. (b) Dorsal view. (c) Frontal view. A4. Labels.