New Country Records of Scarab Dung Beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) in Swaziland and Zambia
Author
Gillett, Conrad P. D. T.
Author
Barr, Iain
text
The Coleopterists Bulletin
2018
2018-09-20
72
3
433
438
http://dx.doi.org/10.1649/0010-065x-72.3.433
journal article
10.1649/0010-065X-72.3.433
1938-4394
5383463
Copris fidius
(Olivier, 1789)
(
Fig. 3A
)
Previously recorded from
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
(
DRC
),
Mozambique
, and
South Africa
(
Ferreira 1972
;
Nguyen-Phung 1988
;
Davis 2013a
;
Deschodt
et al.
2015b
).
New country record
for
Swaziland
: Ten specimens, Mbuluzi Game Reserve,
20–30 March 2016
. Nocturnal. We found this species in overnight pitfall traps baited with fresh wildebeest dung, in company with
Copris elphenor
Klug. It
was captured only during
March 2016
, which was a comparatively wet period compared to
April 2015
, when no specimens were found despite many pitfall traps being operated. The species is recorded as being “centred on forest patches, both along the eastern coastline of
South Africa
as far as the extreme south of
Mozambique
, and at higher altitude along the edge of the eastern escarpment in the north of its South African range” (
Deschodt
et al.
2015b
). It was evaluated as belonging to the category of ‘least concern’ in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (
Davis 2013a
).
Genus
Copridaspidus
Boucomont, 1920
This monotypic genus contains only the following species, which is rarely collected and known only from disjunct regions of moist savanna from the north and south of the
Congo
Basin (
Davis
et al.
2008
).The nesting behavior of the genus remains unknown.