Hesperus splendoris (Last) is transferred from the genus Cafius to Hesperus Fauvel and the name is replaced as H. neosplendoris. Illustrations of the holotype and label data are presented.
Members of the genus Cafius Stephens (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) are confined to seashore habitats worldwide. From the time of its description, C. splendoris Last has been consistently classified with the other 44 species in the genus Cafius. However, this placement was questioned by Frank & Ahn (2011), mainly because of its distribution on Mt. Amingwiwa 1000–2300 m asl in Papua New Guinea. This led us study the systematic status of C. splendoris in more detail.
Examination of the holotype of C. splendoris (Figs. 1 and 2) reveals that the specimen represents a species of Hesperus Fauvel. It lacks the diagnostic characters of Cafius but corresponds well to the diagnostic characters for Hesperus: maxillary and labial palps elongate, maxillary palpomere 3 more or less 2.0 times as long as wide, labial palpomere 2 more than 2.0 times longer than wide; largest lateral macrosetal puncture of pronotum separated from lateral margin by more than 3.0 times width of puncture; mesoventrite with rounded intercoxal process; outer edge of front tibia with spines; front tarsomeres 1–4 each with modified pale setae on ventral surface. We herein, transfer C. splendoris to the genus Hesperus.
TABLE 1.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEMBERS OF H. NEOSPLENDORIS AND H. SPLENDORIS.
We subsequently found that Last (1987: 46) described another new species named Hesperus splendoris in the same paper with Cafius splendoris. Differences between these 2 species are presented in Table 1. Because this renders this name (H. splendoris, new combination) invalid, we propose a replacement name for the junior homonym as follows:
Hesperus neosplendoris Yoo and Ahn, new name
Hesperus splendoris (Last), new combination, not Last, 1987: 46.
Cafius splendoris Last, 1987: 52.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Shepherd Myers (Bishop Museum, Honolulu) for loan of the type specimen. Suggestions including a new name by H. Frank (Univ. of Florida, Gainesville) made the manuscript concise and crisp. This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2009-0073111 and 2012-031412).
