Platycerus caraboides caraboides (Linnaeus, 1758)

Bartolozzi, Luca, Ghahari, Hassan, Sprecher-Uebersax, Eva & Zilioli, Michele, 2014, A checklist of stag beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea: Lucanidae) from Iran, Zootaxa 3887 (3), pp. 422-436 : 428

Platycerus caraboides caraboides (Linnaeus, 1758)

( Figs. 12–13 )

Scarabaeus caraboides Linnaeus, 1758: 354 .

Distribution. Widely distributed Palaearctic species (see Bartolozzi & Sprecher-Uebersax 2006).

Distribution in Iran. Guilan ( Sakenin et al. 2008), Iran ( Bartolozzi & Sprecher-Uebersax 2006, Bunalski et al. 2014, without precise locality).

Remarks. The records of this species for Iran ( Bartolozzi & Sprecher-Uebersax 2006; Sakenin et al. 2008, Bunalski et al. 2014) need to be verified.

Platycerus primigenius Weise, 1960 lives in the Caucasus region and it is possible that the records of P. caraboides in fact refer to this taxon (see below); the closely related P. caucasicus Parry, 1864 was also recorded from Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, South Russia ( Bartolozzi & Sprecher-Uebersax 2006), and Turkey ( Imura 2010).

Gusakov (2003) described P. perplexus Gusakov, 2003 and P. vicinus Gusakov, 2003 from Caucaus ( Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia), so the status and complete distribution of these species also needs to be verified.

Platycerus caraboides caraboides was recorded on Acer velutinum (Sapindaceae) in Iran by Sakenin et al. (2008).

Figures

FIGURES 7 – 15. 7 — Aesalus ulanowskii (male), 8 — Aesalus ulanowskii (female), 9 — Sinodendron persicum (male), 10 — Sinodendron persicum (female), 11 — Sinodendron persicum (male, lateral), 12 — Platycerus caraboides caraboides (male), 13 — Platycerus caraboides caraboides (female), 14 — Platycerus primigenius (male), 15 — Platycerus primigenius (female).