Bledius (Pucerus) niloticus Erichson, 1840

Blinstein, Semen, 2024, New Species, Records And Synonym Of The Genus Bledius Leach, 1819 (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Oxytelini) From India, Acta Biologica Universitatis Daugavpiliensis 24 (2), pp. 177-182 : 180

Bledius (Pucerus) niloticus Erichson, 1840

Note. Biswas and Sengupta (1989) were the first to list this species for India: “ INDIA (Punjab, West Bengal, Bihar and Sikkim)”. Unfortunately, I was not able to study any specimen from this series, but the descriptions and drawings provided by the authors made it possible to verify the fallacy of their statement. Comparison with the specimens from the species series (NHMW) and the original description ( Erichson, 1840) demonstrated a number of significant differences and showed that the “Indian” series not only belongs to another species, but also to a different group in the subgenus Pucerus Mulsant & Rey, 1878 . First, this concerns the structure of the head. In Bl. niloticus , the male clypeus is armed with two short, widely spaced spines (Fig. 5) while in the specimens cited by Biswas and Sengupta (1989) this armament consists of one median spine (Fig. 6), there is no parietal fossa present, and the parameters of the aedeagus are different (cf. figs 7, 8). As in the description of their oth- er species ( Biswas and Sengupta 1989), these authors did not indicate sex of the studied specimens, which prevents from correct understanding of their species-concepts.

However, Bl. niloticus is subsequently listed as an Indian species by some authors ( Smetana, 2004; Abdel-Dayem, 2020) based on a

180 misidentified record in ( Biswas and Sengupta 1989). Based on this confirmation of misiden- tification of Bl. niloticus by these authors, it is herewith removed from the list of the Indian Staphylinidae .