Bledius corniger ROSENHAUER, 1856

Assing, Volker, Schülke, Michael, Brachat, Volker & Meybohm, Heinrich, 2018, On the Staphylinidae of the Greek island Corfu (Insecta: Coleoptera), Beiträge Zur Entomologie = Contributions to Entomology (Beitr. Entomol.) 68 (1), pp. 31-67 : 55

Bledius corniger ROSENHAUER, 1856

Bledius bubalus GISTEL, 1857: 18 ; syn. nov.

The original description of B. bubalus , which is based on an unspecified number of syntypes from “Corfu” ( GISTEL 1857), is nearly devoid of information. GISTEL (1857) merely states that the head has three horns (“Kopf mit drei Hörnern, von denen das mittlere das längste”) and that the species is otherwise similar to his interpretation of B. crassicollis LACORDAIRE, 1835 .

Previous attempts at finding type material in the Gistel collection, which is supposedly deposited in the Zoologische Staatssammlung München, have not been successful (e.g., ASSING 2008c). Bledius bubalus has never been recorded since the original description and is currently listed only for Corfu ( HERMAN 2001, SCHÜLKE & SMETANA 2015). However, Bledius species are generally more or less widespread, so that the possibility that there is an endemic species in Corfu can be ruled out. There is no West Palaearctic Bledius species with three horns on the head, so Gistel evidently misinterpreted the anterior process of the pronotum as originating from the head. Four species with two horn-like processes on the head and a long horn-shaped process of the pronotum are known from Corfu: B. spectabilis , B. frisius , B. furcatus , and B. corniger . Only B. corniger is of similar size as B. crassicollis , whereas the other three species are distinctly larger. Therefore, B. bubalus is synonymized with B. corniger .