Helops tristis Rossi, 1790

Kamiński, Marcin Jan, Bouchard, Patrice, Leo, Piero & Iwan, Dariusz, 2021, On the type species of the genus Dendarus Dejean, 1821 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), Zootaxa 5048 (4), pp. 575-580 : 576

Status of Helops tristis Rossi, 1790

Rossi (1790) described and illustrated Helops tristis from the Central Italian region of Etruria. Type specimens from Rossi’s collection have been considered lost ( Seidlitz, 1893), although Horn and Kahle (1937) and Horn et al. (1990) indicated that some of his material went to the Museum für Naturkunde (ZMB - Berlin). Based on contacts with Bernd Jaeger of the ZMB, two historical specimens from Italy under the species name Helops tristis were located in the Rossi material. As Rossi (1790) did not specify the number of studied specimens nor designate a holotype while describing Helops tristis a lectotype designation is needed in order to fix the taxonomic status of the species. The male specimen presented on the Fig. 1A is hereby designated as the lectotype. The second specimen, a female, is accordingly treated as a paralectotype. Labels indicating the status of these two specimens were added.

Up to now, the following five species of Dendarus have been reported from Italy ( Aliquo et al. 2007, Trichas 2008, Soldati 2012, Iwan et al. 2020): D. (Dendarus) carinatus Mulsant & Rey, 1854 , D. (Dendarus) coarcticollis Mulsant, 1854 , D. (Pandarinus) dalmatinus (Germar, 1823) , D. (Pandarinus) peslieri Soldati, 2012 , and D. (Paroderus) lugens (Mulsant & Rey, 1854) . Italian records of D. (Pandarinus) coelatus Brullé, 1832 are artificial, and due to misinterpretation of this species with D. peslieri ( Aliquò & Soldati 2014) . The investigation of the newly designated lectotype of D. tristis (Rossi) clearly indicates that it is not synonymous with D. (Dendarus) coarcticollis Mulsant, 1854 ( Fig. 1 ). In fact, it is fully convergent with the taxonomic concept of D. lugens , and as a result it is hereby considered as a senior synonym of this species.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Habitus photographs of selected Dendarus species. Lectotype (A) and paralectotype (B) of Helops tristis, lectotype (C) of Pandarus coarcticollis (photos by MNHN/Christophe Rivier).