Tesserodon novaehollandiae ( Fabricius, 1775 )

Tesserodon novaehollandiae ( Fabricius, 1775) View in CoL

Scarabaeus novae Hollandiae Fabricius, 1775: 29 .

Name-bearing type: Unsexed holotype by inferred monotypy in the Natural History Museum, London, UK, ex Sir Joseph Banks collection ( Fabricius 1775; Matthews 1974; MC’s personal observation, 2016) ( Fig. 2 View FIGURE 2 , 3A View FIGURE 3 ). Type locality: Endeavour River area, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia ( Fabricius 1775; Matthews 1974).

Remarks: Incorrect subsequent spelling Scarabaeus hollandiae established by Fabricius (1781) adopted by most authors until being rejected by Matthews (1974). Under Article 11.9.5 and 32.5.2.2 of the Code, the original two-word spelling was justifiably emended to novaehollandiae View in CoL by Matthews (1974) and adopted as valid. Our text above provides more details about this. Matthews (1974) treated the sole specimen he found in the Joseph Banks collection at the London Museum ( Fig. 2 View FIGURE 2 , 3A View FIGURE 3 ) as the holotype of novaehollandiae View in CoL , implicitly by monotypy. While Fabricius (1775) mentioned no number of specimens examined, his description does not preclude the possibility of him having examined only one as Matthews assumed. For this reason, we do not challenge Matthews’s interpretation. The identity of the type locality, originally indicated simply as Australia (“nova Hollandia”) by Fabricius, is, following Matthews (1974), narrowed down to the region near the mouth of the Endeavour River, in the state of Queensland, because, as explained in the text, this was the only place within the range of the species visited by Banks and the rest of the Endeavour crew, the collectors of the type series.

Tessarodon piceum Hope, 1842: 424 , junior subjective synonymy under Tesserodon novaehollandiae (Fabricius) View in CoL established by Matthews (1974).

Name-bearing type: Unsexed holotype by inferred monotypy in the Hope Entomological Collections, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, UK ( Matthews 1974). Type locality: Australia ( Hope 1842).

Remarks: Hope (1842) did not state where his type material was deposited, but, as widely known for his specimens in general (e.g., Smith 1986; Horn et al. 1990a), this must have been in the Oxford Museum collection now bearing his name. Matthews (1974) treated a specimen he found there under “no. 447” as the holotype, inferring monotypy. Since Hope’s (1842) description is silent as to the number of specimens examined, this is plausible, so we do not dispute Matthews’s interpretation. On the other hand, the restricted type locality mentioned by him (and Westwood 1842, 1845), Port Essington, in the Northern Territory, is not accepted. Port Essington was a failed British settlement on the northern coast of Australia that existed for about a decade during the late 1830s and the 1840s. It appears that some of the settlers sent back to Britain a few beetle specimens, which were then studied by Hope for his 1842 paper titled “Observations on the Coleoptera of Port Essington, in Australia ”. It was this title that likely induced Matthews to believe that the piceus type originated from Port Essington. However, in the paragraph immediately preceding the T. piceus description, Hope (1842) specified that Port Essington was the locality only for his new species of Onthophagus Latreille, 1802 View in CoL and, presumably, the Bolboceras Kirby, 1818 View in CoL introduced earlier in his paper. All the species following the Onthophagus View in CoL , including, as the first one described, T. piceus , originated “from other parts of New Holland ”. So, while we are not able to pinpoint an exact locality for the type material, if one is to follow Hope, the type locality is certainly not Port Essington. But we recognize that, instead of being misled by the title as we stated above, Matthews (1974) may have concluded the Oxford Museum specimen came from Port Essington based on a label pinned to it; if that was the case, and only a reexamination of the specimen can confirm, the mistake was Hope’s.

Distribution: From Broome, in Western Australia, to Carnarvon National Park, in central Queensland, Australia ( Matthews 1974; Storey 1991; Atlas of Living Australia 2024).