Colophon primosi

The beetle

Colophon primosi is a beetle in the family Lucanidae (order Coleoptera).

Range and habitat

Colophon primosi is one of 17 described species of the stag beetle genus Colophon, endemic to South Africa. Barnard's mountaineering interest first brought him into contact with the genus, and many species of the beetles were named after his mountaineering friends. Indiscriminate collecting and habitat destruction, especially from fires as the beetles are flightless, are so threatening to the genus, it has been placed under the protection of nature conservation laws in South Africa, with C. Primosi being particularly endangered.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Habits

Keppel Harcourt Barnard (1887–1964), who pioneered studies of this genus while working at the South African Museum.

In crisis

TRAFFIC has reported on insect trade fairs in Germany where tens of thousands of specimens have been offered for sale, and has called for threatened butterfly and beetle species to be placed under EU Wildlife Trade protection.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix III. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Colophon primosi is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Colophon primosi, Wikidata item Q305983. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.