Copris Müller, 1764

Edmonds, W. D., 2018, The dung beetle fauna of the Big Bend region of Texas (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), Insecta Mundi 642, pp. 1-30 : 12-13

Copris Müller

The genus Copris occurs world-wide, with most of its 225 or so species occurring in Africa and Asia. Tropical Africa alone is home to about 100 species ( Cambefort and Nguyen-Phung 1996). They are absent from Australia and all but the northwestern corner of South America. McCleve and Kohlmann (2005) reported 32 species (some of which include recognized subspecies) in the Western Hemisphere. Of these, only one ( C. incertus Say ) reaches South America, nine inhabit the United States, while the remaining occur in Mexico and Central America. Four species ( C. arizonensis Schaeffer , C. remotus LeConte , C. lecontei Matthews and C. macclevei Warner ) are shared between Mexico and the United States. The likely closest relative of C. arizonensis is C. warneri McCleve and Kohlmann , a Mexican species from the mountains of Chihuahua and Sonora likely also associated with Neotoma ( McCleve and Kohlmann 2005) . The genus in the Western Hemisphere was revised by Matthews (1961).

The nesting behavior of the genus is described by Halffter and Matthews (1966) and Halffter and Edmonds (1982); it is unusual among dung beetles in that it exhibits active parental care of the brood. Most Copris species for which habits are known are nocturnal and exploit the excrement of surface mammals. Four Mexico–US species have known relationships with nesting vertebrates: C. arizonensis and C. macclevei with wood rats [ Neotoma ], C. megasoma with gophers [ Thomomys ] and C. gopheri with the gopher tortoise [ Gopherus polyphemus Daudin ]. In these cases, the adults utilize the feces of their vertebrate host for feeding and nesting in the soil beneath nest chambers and tunnels; only rarely are they attracted to feces-baited pitfall traps.