2 

 they are published. Holotypes are not selected and names 



are not proposed for the new species to avoid potential 



nomenclatural problems . 



History 



The first described member of the genus Ischyrus 

 Lacordaire is Erotylus quadripunctatus Olivier (1792) . The 

 first use of the name Ischyrus was by Chevrolat in fascicle 

 5 of the second edition of De jean' s catalog (1836) . 

 Because most of the second edition was burned in a fire, 

 the third edition of the Dejean catalog (1837) was 

 immediately printed. (See Madge, 1988, for dates of 

 publication and history of the Dejean catalogs.) 



De jean' s (1836, 1837) catalogs were among the first 

 works to split the genus Erotylus Fabricius (1775) into 

 more manageable, related taxa. Species and generic 

 concepts were in their infancy during the early 1800s. For 

 the Erotylidae, Dejean' s genera appear to be groups of 

 species with similar body size and color. This is evident 

 in the proposed genus Ischyrus Chevrolat containing large 

 dull-black species, Mycotretus Chevrolat containing smaller 

 species with yellow and black color patterns, and Lybas 

 Chevrolat containing species that were oval and solid red. 

 Dejean' s catalogs were simply checklists of his collection 

 in which many generic and specific names were proposed. 

 Because the Dejean names lacked descriptions, they were 

 often ignored by early taxonomists. 



