Melolontha

Melolontha
	A cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha); at take-off
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Coleoptera
Family:	Scarabaeidae
Subfamily:	Melolonthinae
Genus:	Melolontha; Fabricius, 1775
Species
	Many, see text

Melolontha is a genus of beetles in the family of the dung beetles. The European cockchafers belong to this genus.

Taxonomy

Linnaeus called the European cockchafer Scarabaeus melolontha. Geoffroy St Hilaire used Melolontha as a genus name (1762), but his book has been suppressed by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature, and the authority for the name is the later (1775) publication by Fabricius [1].

Species

The following is a list of species within the genus Melolontha:

Melolontha aceris Faldermann, 1835
Melolontha afflicta Ballion, 1870
Melolontha albida Frivaldszky, 1835
Melolontha anita Reitter, 1902
Melolontha argus Burmeister 1855
Melolontha bifurcata (Brenske, 1896)
Melolontha chinensis (Guerin, 1838)
Melolontha ciliciensis Petrovitz
Melolontha flabellata Sharp, 1876
Melolontha frater, Indonesia, Arrow 1913
Melolontha fuscotestacea Kraatz, 1887
Melolontha guttigera Sharp, 1876
Melolontha hippocastani Fabricius, 1801, European Forest Cockchafer
Melolontha incana Motchulsky, 1853
Melolontha insulana Burmeister 1939?
Melolontha japonica Burmeister, 1855
Melolontha kraatzi Reitter 1906
Melolontha melolontha (Linnaeus, 1758), Common European Cockchafer
Melolontha papposa Illiger, 1803
Melolontha pectoralis Megerle von Mühlfeld, 1812, European Large Cockchafer
Melolontha rubiginosa
Melolontha rufocrassa Fairmaire, 1889
Melolontha satsumaenis Nijma and Kinoshita
Melolontha virescens (Brenske, 1896)

Note: this list should be verified by an entomologist; it may contain duplicates (when a species is known under more than one scientific name) or obsolete scientific names, or it may be incomplete. The taxonomic authorities also have not been verified.