Lepidiota gilesi Blackburn, 1912

Allsopp, Peter G., 2020, Clarification of the status of the types of Australian Melolonthini (Coleoptera Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) described before 1950, Zootaxa 4885 (4), pp. 451-486 : 464

Lepidiota gilesi Blackburn, 1912

Lepidiota gilesi Blackburn, 1912: 62 .

Lectotype (here designated) male: Type H. T. (circular red ringed, typeset) | Blb. (handwritten) | 7897 N.W.A. [North-west Australia] ♂ (handwritten in red) T (handwritten) | Blackburn coll. 1910-236 (typeset) | Lepidiota Gilesi, Blackb. (handwritten) | my lectotype label; in NHML.

Blackburn (1912) did not define the type series, seeing an unknown number of males (vide Articles 73.1.2, 72.1.1). Lea (1912) noted that the ‘type’ had been sent to NHML, and Britton (1978) referred to a “ holotype ” male from Northwest Australia in NHML. Houston & Weir (1992) listed a “ holotype (probable)” from Giles, Western Australia. As Britton (1978) and Houston & Weir (1992) provided no discussion and did not label any specimen in NHML, neither mention of a holotype constitutes a valid lectotype designation (vide Article 74.5). To stabilise nomenclature, I designate the male in NHML the lectotype.

The species name suggests that it was named for a person, probably Ernest Giles (1835–1897) who led expeditions to central and southern Western Australia ( Wikipedia 2020), but Houston & Weir (1992) attribute the Blackburn’s (1912) reference to Giles as being a place; this is not the settlement in mid-eastern Western Australia [25.03°S, 12830°E], as it was established only in 1956.