Bodiloides ictericus is a species of dung beetle in the family Scarabaeidae, found in the Palearctic. It is one of more than 50 species in the genus Bodiloides.
Bodiloides ictericus was formerly classified as Scarabaeus nitidulus, Scarabaeus ictericus, and Aphodius nitidulus. It has two subspecies, Bodiloides ictericus ictericus and Bodiloides ictericus ghardimaouensis.
Notes on the name
This species was described by Laicharting under the name Scarabaeus ictericus in 1781. The description is in German, starts with the German name and ends with a short Latin description. Laicharting called the beetle "Gelbsüchtiger Dungkäfer", or "jaundiced dung beetle". The part of the name jaundice corresponds to the Latin epithet ictericus (from ancient Greek ικτερικός ikterikós, jaundiced). It apparently refers to the yellowish elytra, not the red.
When the large genus Scarabaeus was split up, the species was moved to the genus Aphódius ("dung beetle", after ancient Greek άφοδος áphodos for defecation, excrement). The name Bodilus is from Mulsant & Rey 1871, established as a subgenus of Aphodius and promoted to genus by Paulian in 1942. The name Bódilus is meaningless according to Berthold Schenkling. At times Aphodius ictericus was considered a color variant of Aphodius merdarius.
The descriptions and the naming of the species demonstrate the problematic situation of entomology at that time. Mulsant took Scarabaeus ictericus Laicharting 1781 to be a color variant of Scarabaeus merdarius Fabricius 1775. This view was adopted by other authors who used Scarabaeus ictericus Laicharting spelled incorrectly Scarabaeus icterus or Scarabaeus ictericus Laichs as a local variety or aberration of the previously described Scarabaeus merdarius. Mulsant mentions in the same work, a few pages above, Scarabaeus ictericus Moll 1785 and Scarabaeus ictericus Paykull 1798 as synonyms to Scarabaeus nitidulus Fabricius 1792. Since nitidulus Fabricius and merdarius Fabricius differ significantly, Mulsant must have been of the opinion, ictericus Laicharting and ictericus Paykull were different.
On the other hand, Von Moll explained in a letter that his ictericus is the beetle described by Laicharting as ictericus, and Paykull noted that he described the ictericus of Von Moll. Paykull described the beetle of Laicharting.
In any case, Louis Bedel 1911 used ictericus Laicharting as a synonym for Scarabaeus nitidulus Fabricius 1792. Because the description von Laicharting is older, the species is now named after him. However, this assessment is not generally accepted. Báguena Corella identified the species described here as Aphodius (Bodilus) nitidulus Fabricius = Scarabaeus nitidulus Fabricius, in a work about the scarab beetles in Spain in 1955. Corella expressed that in his opinion the species was wrongly named after Laicharting and only Paykull 1798 was the same beetle as Fabricius described. The clarification of the contradictions would be possible by considering the holotypes of Laicharting, whose whereabouts are not known. According to Dellacasa & Dellacasa, Scarabaeus ictericus Laicharting 1781 is the type species for the new genus Bodiloides, which is a species of the old genus Bodilus. It is called accordingly Bodiloides ictericus.
Description of the beetle
The four to five millimeter long beetle is cylindrical to oval. The elytra are typically shiny, light yellow-brown, the head, breast shield and underside are darker.
The head is red-brown at least in front, but can also be predominantly black-brown. It is only slightly arched and inclined only a little forward. It is finely punctate, coarser on the front. On the forehead it has three humps, which are inconspicuous, especially in females, the middle one being the most obvious (Fig. 2). Viewed from above, the head is not very wide. The lighter front edge of the head shield is broadly edged with rounded front corners. The cheeks in front of the flat eyes protrude slightly. The antennae are nine-segmented. The second segment is longer than the following five segments combined. The antennae tip is a gray-yellow, three-part, elongated round club.
The pronotum is almost entirely brown-red or black, only laterally it is yellow-brown at the edge, at least at the back. The punctation is coarser, especially towards the sides, than that of the head, with much smaller punctures interspersed (double punctation, the large punctures as umbilical points). The pronotum base is edged, and the edge disappears in the middle of the base. The rear angles are rounded.