Canthidium (Neocanthidium) hypocrita Balthasar, 1939

Cupello, Mario, 2018, On the types species of the New World dung beetle genus Canthidium Erichson, 1847 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), with an annotated checklist of species, Zootaxa 4388 (4), pp. 451-486 : 470

Canthidium (Neocanthidium) hypocrita Balthasar, 1939

Canthidium hypocrita Balthasar, 1939: 129 [here transferred to the subgenus Neocanthidium ]. Type locality: “ Mérida ” [since the holotype is labelled simply as coming from “ Merida ”, without any country information ( Balthasar 1939; Bezděk & Hájek 2012), it is not clear whether it refers to the Venezuelan state of same name or to the capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán. Balthasar (1939) himself was the first author to raise this question (“ Mérida (nicht angegeben ob in Mexiko oder Venezuela)”), which was followed by Martínez (1947) in his addenda to Blackwelder’s (1944) catalogue, where he cited C. hypocrita distribution as ambiguous between Venezuela and Mexico. Then, Martínez & Halffter (1986a), without explaining why they thought so, cited only Venezuela in the geographical distribution section under C. hypocrita . Since it is not yet clear which locality the “ Mérida ” information on the holotype’s label refers to, I have decided not to follow Martínez & Halffter (1986a), but instead consider C. hypocrita type locality as ambiguous in the same way as done by Balthasar (1939) and Martínez (1947)]. Type material: Holotype female (NMPC—ex Balthasar collection). Distribution: Unknown.