Cercophonius himalayensis

Monod, Lionel, Duperre, Nadine & Harms, Danilo, 2019, An annotated catalogue of the scorpion types (Arachnida, Scorpiones) held in the Zoological Museum Hamburg. Part I: Parvorder Iurida Soleglad & Fet, 2003, Evolutionary Systematics 3 (2), pp. 109-200 : 109

Cercophonius himalayensis

Cercophonius himalayensis Lourenço, 1996: 87-89

Current senior synonym.

Phoniocercus sanmartini Cekalovic, 1968 [synonymyized by Ojanguren-Affilastro et al. 2018: 474, 477]

Holotype.

♂ (ZMH-A0001581), India, Himalaya, [Uttarakhand] Ukal, Pauri Garhwal, U.P., 308N-7850E [30°09 ’00” N, 78°50 ’00” E], about 45 km from the town of Pauri [30°09 ’10” N, 78°46 ’37” E] (2250 m alt.), 16.05.1958, F. Schmid leg. (ZMH, Eing. Nr. A40/96).

Remarks.

Ojanguren-Affilastro et al. (2018) considered that the specimen was mislabelled (it was probably collected in Chile and not in India like it is stated on the label). They explained that the entomologist Fernand Schmid (1924-1998) collected in Uttar Pradesh (India) in 1958 ( Weaver and Nimmo 1999) but was at the same time working with material collected in Chile by Luis Enrique Peña ( Schmid 1958). Peña, a Chilean entomologist, was regularly supplying researchers, museums and collections around the world with arachnid and insect specimens from Chile ( Barriga-Tũńon and Ugarte-Peña 1995). He probably collected the present specimen and sent it to the Zoologisches Museum Hamburg. It is plausible that a label of Schmid’s field work in India was wrongly placed inside the vial of the scorpion collected by Peña.