What's in a name ?

the Supertramp
Rhantus suturalis spread from New Guinea across the world, one and a half million years ago, according to research by Balke et. al (2009). After that research, the beetle was given the English name 'the Supertramp beetle'. This global wandering has led to specimens of this species being found worldwide in previous centuries, each of which was given its own name. It took a long time before it could be determined that it was the same species. In earlier times, entomologists had to have access to the often voluminous and costly works of other authors, in which the descriptions and images not always were clear. When I see the drawings in some more modern field guides, I still don't think the beetle images closely resemble reality.

Rhantus Dejean 1833
The French general and entomologist Dejean and the German entomologist Eschscholtz together placed a number of Colymbetes and Dytiscus beetles from their collections in a new group, which Dejean published in 1833 as Rantus, Eschscholtz. A good move, but unfortunately a number of things inevitably went wrong during the synonymization. And also the (ancient) Greek ραντος - rantos should have been converted into Latin into rhantus, because of the breath sound that follows the r. The meaning of the Greek word could mean something like: 'moisten' (Brink, P. in ICZN 1954, see Literature).

The inaccuracies in establishing the Rhantus genus have led to the species having various names. Only with "Opinion 289" from the ICZN (1954) were matters corrected, which meant that synonymous names remained for a number of years. As van Nieukerken (1992) wrote: "Dit is een genus waar recentelijk de meeste nomenclatorische naamsveranderingen zijn doorgevoerd." (This is a genus where the most nomenclatory name changes have recently occurred.) The advantage is, that after the period of confusion, there is more stability with the correct names.

For example, in my copy of "Zoetwaterleven" (Tirion 2010) I see the old name " Rhantus notatus " under the picture, but in the description the new name " Rhantus frontalis ".

¹ his name has been in use in England (van Nieukerken, 1992 and Forster&Friday 2011).

The translations of the species names show that the species names are not meaningful, they are arbitrary designations of what different authors may have considered a striking characteristic. The suture, for example, the seam between the elytra, is high in contrast in all Rhantus species, except in R. grapii, of the subgenus Nartus, which has been reverted to a genus by Balke (2017).

An extensive history of the names and the problems on a »next page«. Only for people who are interested in classification and nomenclature.