Stenobelus testaceus (G. R. Waterhouse) Oberprieler & Thompson & Peterson, 2010

Oberprieler, Rolf G., Thompson, Richard T. & Peterson, Magnus, 2010, Darwin’s forgotten weevil, Zootaxa 2675, pp. 33-46 : 36-37

Stenobelus testaceus (G. R. Waterhouse) comb. n.

( Figs. 1–4, 7, 9, 11–12)

Belus testaceus G. R. Waterhouse, 1839: 192 ; Sherborne, 1931: 6454; Smith 1987: 100.

Belus linearis Pascoe, 1870: 475 (type locality: Queensland); Gemminger & von Harold, 1871: 2456; Lea 1908: 230, 231; 1909a: 197, 1909c: 5; Von Dalla Torre & Voss 1935: 9, syn. n.

Leptobelus linearis (Pascoe) : Zimmerman, 1991: 57, pl. 28, figs. 7, 8; 1994: 358, fig. 233.

Stenobelus (Stenobelus) linearis (Pascoe) : Legalov, 2009: 308.

Type locality. King George Sound (Albany), Western Australia .

Diagnosis. SL 7–8mm; pronotum and elytra without white median stripe (vitta); setae of dorsal vestiture short, directed into punctures ( Fig. 7); antennae inserted an eye diameter in front of eyes; front tibiae with single, large spine at distal end of basal emargination ( Fig. 9); tarsites of front tarsi elongate, with fine, uniformly pale setae ( Figs. 11–12); elytra posteriorly exceeding abdomen by more than length of apical ventrite.

Material examined (10 specimens). Types: testaceus, HT ♀, “ Type / H.T. [disc with red margin] // [18]63/44 [blue disc] // Belus testaceus / Waterhouse / King George’s Sound [in G.R. Waterhouse’s hand]” ( BMHN); linearis, HT ♀, “ Type [disc with red margin] // Queensland [in Pascoe’s hand on green oval disc] // Belus / linearis / Pasc. / type ” [in Pascoe’s hand] // Pascoe Coll. / B.M. 1893.60 [printed]” ( BMNH). Other specimens: 1♂, 1♀ (without abdomen), K.[ing] G.[eorge] S.[ound] // 10947 / Belus / linearis Pasc. / W. Australia [in Lea’s hand] // Belus / linearis / Pascoe / R.T. Thompson det. 1980 / comp. with type [printed in red ink] // Specimen / figured / ECZ // Leptobelus / linearis / (Pascoe) / det. E.C. Zimmerman ( ANIC); 1♂, 1♀, 2 exx., K. G. Sound, W.A. ( USSA); 1♂ (without abdomen), 1♀, “Nov. Holl. / N.S.W. // Fry Coll. / 1905- 100 // 14639” ( BMNH) .

Distribution. South-western Western Australia, possibly also New South Wales and southern Queensland ( Fig. 15).

Host plants. Unknown.

Remarks. The type of testaceus was received at the BMNH from the Entomological Society in 1863. Smith (1987) tentatively referred Belus testaceus to the number 3556 in Darwin’s Insect Notes, the entry to which reads “Curculio, one of the most abundant insects here [Hobart Town Feby—crossed out] King George’s Sound March”, on the grounds that Waterhouse (1839) appears to have singled it out for description. However, Waterhouse evidently only had a single specimen for description and belids never seem abundant in Australia, least of all Stenobelus . Darwin collected another 11 (smaller) species of weevils at King George Sound ( Lea 1926), and probably one or several of these may have been abundant enough for Darwin to record it. The exact provenance of Pascoe’s linearis is uncertain. In his description of the species, Pascoe (1870) gave the locality of the single type as “ Queensland ”, and the type is labelled as such, but Lea (1908, 1909a) identified specimens from King George Sound as this species and evidently had not seen any specimens from Queensland or New South Wales that agreed with Pascoe’s description or type. Neither had Zimmerman (1994) almost a century later, and he consequently regarded “ Queensland ” as an error and not a correct type locality for linearis . The existence of the two specimens in the Fry Coll. (BMNH) labelled “N.S.W.” lends some credence to the possibility that the provenance of Pascoe’s type specimen may, in fact, have been correct. The entry for the registration number attached to the larger of these two specimens reads “14639, Belus Australia N.S. Wales Sidney Stevens”. John Crace Stevens was an insect dealer in England, who operated the J. C. Stevens Auction Rooms until his death in 1859, and Alexander Fry obtained the specimens from J. C. Stevens in 1857 or 1858. In 1863 they were received by the British Museum from the Entomological Society. The collector of the specimens in Australia is unknown, and it is therefore not certain whether they where indeed collected in Sydney or even in New South Wales. However, S. tibialis is recorded from both south-western and south-eastern Australia, and it is possible that S. testaceus may also occur on both sides of the Australian continent. No other specimens unequivocally collected in south-eastern Australia have, however, been located, nor in fact any from anywhere other than King George Sound, and the species may thus be geographically restricted to the Albany region in south-western Australia and the locality records of Pascoe’s type and the two Fry specimens both be erroneous. The lack of possible authentic specimens from south-eastern Australia also precludes a proper investigation assessing whether linearis may perhaps denote an eastern taxon distinct at species or subspecies level from S. testaceus in the west. Our comparison of the available specimens revealed no evidence to suggest such a distinction, and we therefore here treat linearis as a synonym of testaceus . In addition to the 10 specimens we have examined, another was deposited in the Zoological Museum of the University of Hamburg in Germany, labelled just “ Australia ” ( Lea 1909a). This museum and its beetle collection were destroyed during the Second World War ( Weidner 1976). It is possible that the specimen had been collected on J. W. Michaelsen’s and R. Hartmeyer’s expedition to south-western Australia in 1905, which visited Albany between the 16 th and 21 st August, although nothing to this effect is contained in the expedition report ( Michaelsen & Hartmeyer 1907) and Lea (1909b) did not record such a specimen in his study of the weevils taken on that expedition.