Hypocacculus (Hypocacculus) elongatulus elongatulus (Rosenhauer)

Penati, Fabio, 2009, An updated catalogue of the Histeridae (Coleoptera) of Sardinia, with faunistic, zoogeographical, ecological and conservation remarks *, Zootaxa 2318, pp. 197-280 : 265

Hypocacculus (Hypocacculus) elongatulus elongatulus (Rosenhauer)

Saprinus Mocquerysi Mars. : Bertolini 1904: 48

Literature data. “ Sardinia ” ( Bertolini 1904; Porta 1926, 1934; Barajon 1966; Audisio et al. 1995; Penati & Vienna 2002; Mazur 2004; Yélamos & Lackner 2004; Penati & Vienna 2005, 2006a).

Notes. This W-Mediterranean species was first recorded from Sardinia by Bertolini (1904) and later uncritically reported by numerous other authors (see above and Tab. 1) but not by Luigioni (1929), who excluded it from the Italian beetle fauna and listed it among the species of uncertain origin or of doubtful determination, as did Vienna (1980), who considered its presence in Italy as rather doubtful. An in-depth study of the collections at MSNG allowed me to discover a specimen of Hypocacculus (Colpellus) praecox in the Dodero collection ( CAD), identified as Saprinus mocquerysi Marseul , a synonym of Hypocacculus elongatulus elongatulus . This shows that Bertolini’s (1904) record may well have been based on a misidentification, and that H. elongatulus is almost certainly not part of the Sardinian histerid fauna.