Pelidnota fallax Gistel, 1857 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

Pelidnota fallax Gistel, 1857 incertae sedis

Pelidnota fallax Gistel, 1857: 80 [original combination].

Distribution.

BRAZIL ( Gistel 1857, Blackwelder 1944, Krajcik 2008, Soula 2009).

Remarks.

Gistel (1857) provided a very brief Latin description of this species which he compared to P. glauca . Pelidnota fallax was described as being brass-green in color ( Gistel 1857). The pronotum is "glittering copper-green" with yellow edges ( Gistel 1857). This species was not included in catalogs of world Rutelinae ( Ohaus 1918, 1934b, Machatschke 1972, 1974). Krajcik (2008) correctly listed P. fallax as a valid species. We have not examined the type specimen of this species and the validity of this taxon is unknown to us. Because P. fallax was compared to P. glauca (synonym of P. alliacea [Germar]) by Gistel (1857), examination of the type specimen (possibly lost) of P. fallax Gistel could be important for stabilizing the taxonomy and nomenclature of species previously compared to P. aeruginosa (Linnaeus).