Phanaeus vicinus Martínez, 1944: 187 . Available name.

Type specimen: Holotype: male (BOLIVIA / Dep. Sta. Cruz / Sta. Cruz de la Sierra / F.Monrós-leg. / Coll. Martínez: ’, ‘ Phanaeus (Meg.) / vicinus / ♂ / sp. n. / A.Martinez-det.19 44 ’, ‘ HOLOTIPO ♂ ’, ‘MACN-En / 1545’, ‘ FICHADO ’), genital capsule and right wing dissected and glued to paper card (wing not illustrated by us), MACN (Figure 6 A–B).

Type locality: Bolivia: Santa Cruz de la Sierra department.

Nomenclatural history: In 1944 Martínez published what he thought to be a new Bolivian species of Megaphanaeus closely related to C. bonariensis, which he named Phanaeus vicinus . Years later, Martínez & Pereira (1967) synonymized Phanaeus vicinus with P. bonariensis, giving the same confusing explanation that they had given for the synonymy between P. lancifer and P. septentrionalis (see section above on Scarabaeus lancifer): while P. argentinus would certainly not represent a valid species, it could be proved in the future to be a valid subspecies of P. bonariensis . In their review of Coprophanaeus, Edmonds & Zídek (2010) endorsed this synonymy without discussing it.

Martínez (1944) stated the holotype of P. vicinus, the only specimen on which his description was based, was deposited in his personal collection, which today is divided in two distinct institutions: Martínez’s holotypes and allotypes are deposited at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’, Buenos Aires, while paratypes and non-type material are housed at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, via Henry F. Howden’s collection. The holotype of P. vicinus (Figure 6 A) was found by us in MACN and its labels’ information are given above.