Mentophilus carinatus ( Reiche, 1841 )

Cupello, Mario, Bouchard, Patrice, Hart, Maximillian & Barclay, Maxwell V. L., 2025, The nomenclature of the Australasian dung beetle genera Mentophilus Castelnau, 1840 and Tesserodon Hope, 1837 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), Zootaxa 5659 (4), pp. 483-510 : 497

Mentophilus carinatus ( Reiche, 1841) , revalidation confirmed

Aulacium carinatum Reiche, 1841 : [211]. Name-bearing type: Unknown number of syntypes, unknown whereabouts, one of the syntypes figured in Reiche (1842: pl. 5, fig. 1a–g) ( Fig. 3D ). Type locality: Western Australia, Australia. Remarks: First cited in the combination Mentophilus carinatus by Lacordaire (1855: 85, footnote 1). Since Matthews (1974), erroneously cited in the literature as “ Mentophilus hollandiae Castelnau, 1840 ”, an unavailable name. The species was originally said to be simply Australian—“Australiens” ( Reiche 1841)—but, given the distribution, the type material can only have been collected somewhere in Western Australia, and so we state this as the type locality.

Distribution: Western coast of Australia, from the tip of the North West Cape south to Watheroo National Park, in the state of Western Australia ( Matthews 1974; Atlas of Living Australia 2024).

Figures

FIGURE 3. Early illustrations of Australian scarabaeines. (A) The type specimen of S. novaehollandiae Fabricius, 1775 as illustrated by Olivier (1789b) during his 1788–1789 visit to the Joseph Banks collection (see Cupello et al. 2023 for details). The larger drawing on the left (“117. b.”) is the enlarged view of the real scale drawing on the right (“117. a.”). (B) Reiche’s (1842) reproduction of Hope’s (1837) rendering of the same specimen, much more detailed and accurate than, though consistent with, Olivier’s. (C) Castelnau’s (1840) illustration of the specimen he misidentified as “Mentophilus hollandiae”, believing it to be Fabricius’s species, but now moved to his new genus Mentophilus Castelnau, 1840. (D) Reiche’s (1842) illustration of his Aulacium carinatum, which he argued was the correct identification of Castelnau’s specimen. Note the obvious differences between Tesserodon novaehollandiae (A and B) and Mentophilus carinatus (C and D) in body shape, especially the pronotum, in the shape of the clypeal teeth, the presence or absence of a mid-longitudinal carina on the pronotum, and the shape of the metatibiae, among other features.