Drapetes clarki Bonvouloir

Johnson, Paul J., 2015, A new species of Drapetes Megerle (Coleoptera: Elateridae), with taxonomic summaries and a key to the species of northern North America, Insecta Mundi 2015 (445), pp. 1-13 : 8-9

Drapetes clarki Bonvouloir

( Fig. 9–10 )

Drapetes clarkii Bonvouloir, 1861: 359 ; Schenkling 1928: 7

Distribution. Brazil: Rio de Janiero

Specimens examined. Syntype, [ Brazil] Constancia, Jan 1857, H. Clark / Clarkii H. Bon.” (MNHN).

A second similar specimen associated with the syntype, but without locality label and with only “clarkii” handwritten on a label was also examined. This second specimen was determined to represent Drapetes variegatus Bonvouloir and may have been placed during a comparison of these species.

Notes. Drapetes clarki was described ( Fig. 9–10 ) from an unspecified number of specimens sent to Victor Henri de Bonvouloir by the Reverend Hamlet Clark. The original description was published with the comment: “Elle a eté découverte à Constantia, dans les États-Unis, par M. Hamlet Clark, à l’obligeance duquel j’ai dù sa communication.” This provenance was repeated by Schenkling (1928). Blackwelder (1944) did not include this species, presumably because of the Bonvouloir remark about it being from the United States.

The Reverend Clark never visited the United States, but he did write at length about his extensive collecting in and around the vicinity of “Constancia” in the Serra dos Órgãos [Organ Mountains] and other sites in the then “Province of Rio Janeiro” (Clark 1857a-b, 1867; Newman 1867a-b; Staines 2002). The “Constancia” reported by Clark (1857a-b, 1867) was determined as the former village of Constância, as located at the present coordinates of 22°22’01”S and 042°55’58”W, in the central portion of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Google Earth © locates these coordinants at the suburban community of Fazenda Boa Fé, approximately 6 air km north-northeast of Teresópolis. At this and other sites, the Reverend Clark collected extensively. Within the elateroid beetles alone, in addition to D. clarki , Fornax clarki Bonvouloir (Eucnemidae) , Esthesopus clarki Candèze , and no fewer than 11 other Elateridae representing four genera were described by Candèze (1860, 1863) soon after Clark’s return to England.

The reporting of D. clarki from the United States by Bonvouloir (1861) is unexplained except by error. Given Clark’s (1857a-b, 1867) descriptions of collecting in the Constância area in 1856, the structural similarity of this beetle to other neotropical species of Drapetes , e.g., D. variegatus Bonvouloir , and over 150 years of no attributable specimens subsequently found in the United States or adjacent countries, the type locality for D. clarki is here redesignated to Constância, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Figures

Figures 9–10. Drapetes clarki. 9) Drapetes clarki drawing from Bonvouloir (1861). 10) Original labels from syntype at MNHN.