Tesserodon gestroi Van Lansberge, 1885

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 : 499

Tesserodon gestroi Van Lansberge, 1885

Tesserodon gestroi Van Lansberge, 1885: 375–376 . Name-bearing type: Male holotype by monotypy in the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale Giacomo Doria, Genoa, Italy ( Matthews 1974; Storey 1991; Alberto Ballerio, personal communication to MC, 22 March 2025). Type locality: Somerset, Cape York, Queensland, Australia ( Van Lansberge 1885; Matthews 1974; Storey 1991). Remarks: Even though Van Lansberge (1885) mentioned no numbers, both Matthews (1974) and Storey (1991) assumed the type series to be composed of a single specimen, the holotype by monotypy. Since the content of Van Lansberge’s description is not inconsistent with such a possibility—e.g., it states a precise figure for body size, “Long. 8 millim.”—we do not dispute this interpretation. This material, according to Van Lansberge, was collected in Somerset, at the northernmost tip of Cape York, by Luigi d’Albertis. Horn et al. (1990a) do not inform the whereabouts of the Australian material gathered by d’Albertis, but it is fair to assume it was deposited in the Genoa Museum like the specimens from the Malay Archipelago were said to have been by the authors. This was Matthews’ assumption too; unfortunately, however, he did not manage to see the gestroi holotype in person. Storey (1991) did and confirmed it to be in Genoa; nevertheless, he realized that Matthews had misidentified the species in his Australian scarabaeine treatise: gestroi sensu Matthews was a new species Storey described as T. erratum , whereas the real gestroi had not been seen by Matthews. According to Storey, the gestroi holotype was collected by d’Albertis in January 1875, presumably based on label information.

Distribution: Northern Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia ( Storey 1991; Atlas of Living Australia 2024).