A.B.T. Smith. 2016. Five new species of Trigonopeltastes... from C. America with new country records...

Andrew B. T. Smith. 2016.
Five new species of Trigonopeltastes Burmeister and Schaum from Central America with new country records for other New World Trichiini (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Cetoniinae).
ZooKeys, 2016, 617: 91-127.
doi: 10.3897/zookeys.617.9178
ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:42A1CB33-7DDC-4EC5-BE28-F2BF40BF5754
Academic editor: Frank Krell

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Trigonopeltastes arborfloricola sp. n. from Nicaragua, 
T. formidulosus sp. n. from Costa Rica, 
T. henryi sp. n. from Costa Rica, 
T. mombachoensis sp. n. from Nicaragua, and 
T. warneri sp. n. from Belize and Guatemala. 

New country records are given for the following: 
Giesbertiolus ornatus Howden, 1988: Costa Rica; 
Paragnorimus sambucus Howden, 1970: Guatemala; 
Trichiotinus bibens (Fabricius, 1775): Canada; 
Trigonopeltastes archimedes Schaum, 1841: Guatemala and Costa Rica; 
Trigonopeltastes frontalis Bates, 1889: Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras; 
Trigonopeltastes glabellus Howden, 1988: Guatemala; 
Trigonopeltastes geometricus Schaum, 1841: Honduras; 
Trigonopeltastes sallaei sallaei Bates, 1889: Guatemala and Honduras; 
Trigonopeltastes simplex Bates, 1889: Mexico; 
Trigonopeltastes variabilis Howden, 1968: Honduras.

The genus Trigonopeltastes Burmeister and Schaum, 1840 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae: Trichiini: Trichiina) is distributed from the southern United States of America to northern Argentina, with most species occurring in Mexico and Central America. Specimens are most often collected in flowers of various shrubs and trees and also turn up in flight intercept traps and by beating vegetation. The rarity of many species in natural history collections emphasizes the need for targeted collecting efforts using specific methods in order to survey New World Trichiini fauna.

The taxonomy of the genus was modernized by Howden (1968), which allowed additional species to be discovered and described by Howden (1988), Howden and Ratcliffe (1990), Howden and Joly (1998), Ricchiardi (2003), and Curoe (2011). While curating and identifying specimens in natural history collections, I discovered five new species of Trigonopeltastes from Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In addition, the examination of more specimens and longer series added several significant new distributional records and helped to clarify the taxonomic status of Trigonopeltastes nigrinus Bates, 1889.

The purpose of this paper is to describe five new species of Trigonopeltastes, update the identification key for Trigonopeltastes, synonymize Trigonopeltastes nigrinus with Trigonopeltastes geometricus Schaum, 1841, report new country records in the New World for a number of Trichiini species, and describe the previously unknown males of Trigonopeltastes aurovelutinus Curoe, 2011 and Trigonopeltastes simplex Bates, 1889. The genus Trigonopeltastes now contains 26 species.

More than 500 specimens were examined to form the basis of this review.