Type Designations and Synonymies for North American Silphidae (Coleoptera)

The purpose of this paper is to provide type data and lectotype and neotype designations for North American Silphidae,described by J. L. LeConte, Thomas Say, M. H. Hatch, and J. W. Angell, and new synonymies of other species. We are engaged in ongoing revisionary work on North American silphids (e.g. Miller and Peck, 1979) and have found considerable nomenclatural confusion because of varying interpretations of poor descriptions and names not fixed to types. Publication of these data is also necessary for their inclusion in the forthcoming fascicle on this family in "A Catalog of the Coleoptera of America North of Mexico", U.S. Dept. Agric. Handbook 529 (J. M. Kingsolver, editor-in-chief). Improved identification keys and characterizations of all United States and Canadian silphids are given in Peck (1982a). In the LeConte and Horn collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), Harvard University, the specimens that bear "type" labels have not been formally validated, and these were placed on the assumed types (supposedly the first in each series) during routine curation early in this century. The Say neotypes were selected from the LeConte collection because it is generally agreed that the original Say material is lost, and that LeConte had the opportunity to compare his specimens with those in Say’s collection (see Lindroth and Freitag, 1969; Miller and Peck, 1979). The specimens designated do not differ in characters from the original published descriptions. Primary types from the Hatch collection have been deposited by Oregon State University in the United States National Museum of Natural History (USNM). Types have recently been designated for Silpha aenescens Casey, Silpha ramosa Say, Agyrtes longulus LeConte, and Necrophilus pettitii Horn (Miller and Peck, 1979; Peck, 1974 and 1982b).