Rutela runica Gistel, 1850 incertae sedis

Moore, Matthew R., Jameson, Mary L., Garner, Beulah H., Audibert, Cedric, Smith, Andrew B. T. & Seidel, Matthias, 2017, Synopsis of the pelidnotine scarabs (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Rutelinae, Rutelini) and annotated catalog of the species and subspecies, ZooKeys 666, pp. 1-349 : 1

Rutela runica Gistel, 1850 incertae sedis

Rutela runica Gistel, 1850: 381 [original combination].

Distribution.

FRENCH GUIANA: Cayenne ( Gistel 1850, Krajcik 2008).

Remarks.

Gistel (1850) provided only a short description of this species in German. He described R. runica being a quarter-inch long and having a chocolate-brown sternum, pro- and mesotarsomeres, and metafemora ( Gistel 1850). Rutela runica has multiple abdominal spots with the head and prothorax having a stripe that runs through them ( Gistel 1850). The scutellum and rune-like markings on the elytra are straw-yellow ( Gistel 1850). There are brown dots on either side of the pronotum ( Gistel 1850). Catalogs of world Rutelinae omitted R. runica ( Ohaus 1918, 1934b, Machatschke 1972, 1974). Krajcik (2008), without explanation, listed R. runica as a probable synonym of Pelidnota terminata Laporte. We think that there is no basis for listing R. runica in synonymy at this time because its type specimen, and thus the validity of the species, is unknown to us. From the description, R. runica is similar to the following species of Rutela that occur in French Guiana: R. histrio Sahlberg, R. lineola (Linnaeus), and R. tricolorea Ohaus. Additionally, there are some Pelidnota with similar coloration (e.g., Pelidnota xanthospila (Germar) from Brazil) as that described by Gistel (1850) for R. runica .