Amaurina vittipennis Moser, 1909

Vitali, Francesco, 2019, Catalogue of the types of the Scarabaeidae in the National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg (Coleoptera), ZooKeys 814, pp. 95-114 : 104-106

Amaurina vittipennis Moser, 1909 Figure 11

Amaurina vittipennis Moser, 1909: 323 (type locality: "Sankuru, Kassai").

Syntype.

Sankuru / Congo-Belge 1901 / Ed. Luja // Donateur 1416a / Ed, Luja, / Lux[em]b[our]g V.1911 // Amaurina / vittipennis / Moser [handwritten by Moser] // 3883, 1♂.

Remarks.

The species was described from an unknown number of specimens, measuring 9 mm in body length, which Luja collected in “Sankuru” and “Kassai”. Such localities must be referred to the current provinces Sankuro and Kasai in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at that time united in the former province Kasai-Oriental.

In spite of the original labels, Luja collected these specimens from August 1898 to 1899, when Baron van Eetveld, general secretary of the Independent State of the Congo, employed him to collect living plants for the Universal Exposition of Paris 1900 ( Luja 1951). He provided a long report of this mission that amazed his contemporaries at home ( Feltgen 1901), due to major discoveries, especially concerning new species and forms of plants ( Ferrant 1911; Heuertz 1954). In 1901, Luja settled in Mozambique ( Luja 1951). The label mentioning the donation is wrong as well, as the date is subsequent to Moser’s description.

As for Euphoresia alboparsa , the specimen preserved in the MHNL does not show the wording “type” as some of Moser’s other types, but it should be deemed to be a syntype.