Accepted by C. Siler: 28 Dec. 2016; published: 20 Feb. 2017 585 ZOOTAXA ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) Copyright © 2017 Magnolia Press Zootaxa 4232 (4): 585–587 http://www.mapress.com/j/zt/ Correspondence https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4232.4.9 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:41FA3C01-49C2-4F4E-A0CC-B5ADA2FB184D Euprepes chaperi Vaillant, 1884, a junior subjective synonym of Mochlus guineensis (W. Peters, 1879) (Scincidae, Lygosominae) IVAN INEICH 1,3 & JEAN-FRANÇOIS TRAPE 2 1 Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Universités, ISyEB (Institut de Systématique, Évolution et Biodiversité), UMR 7205 (CNRS, MNHN, UPMC, EPHE), CP 30 (Reptiles), 57 rue Cuvier – 75251 Paris cedex, France 2 Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UMR MIVEGEC, Laboratoire de Paludologie et Zoologie Médicale, IRD, BP 1386, Dakar, Senegal 3 Corresponding author. E-mail: ivan.ineich@mnhn.fr During travel made in February and March 1882 in the former French Protectorate of Côte d’Or (southeastern Ivory Coast), Mr Chaper, who had previously sent numerous specimens to the Paris Natural History Museum (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Reptiles & Amphibiens; MNHN-RA), collected about 19 reptiles (and one python egg) belonging to 12 species. All those specimens were deposited in the MNHN-RA collections. Among them some specimens were described as a new species, Euprepes chaperi, in two separate publications reporting on that collection published in the same year by Vaillant (1884a,b), head of the Zoology (Reptiles and Fishes) Laboratory at Paris Natural History Museum. The status of that species was not recently reviewed and several options are reported in literature including validity of the species (in the genus Lygosoma Hardwicke & Gray) or synonymy, sometimes simultaneously in the same data base (see Uetz & Hosek, 2016). We here locate the type series of E. chaperi and carefully check their identity. Maurice Armand Chaper (1834−1896) was an engineer, a geologist (he worked on the Panama Canal project) and a paleontologist. He was also the President of the French ‘Société zoologique de France’. A portrait can be seen in d’Hondt (2013: fig. 7). He is considered a pioneer in the creation of the international code of zoological nomenclature as early as 1880 with Joseph Henri Ferdinand Douvillé (1846−1937). He travelled to many countries (Panama, Venezuela, West Indies, Senegal, Ghana and Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Africa, Borneo, India and Malaysia) where he collected reptiles, fishes, arthropods, bryozoans, molluscs, etc. (d’Hondt, 2013). Since French “Côte d’Or” (meaning Gold Coast) and “Gold Coast” (actual Ghana) are often mixed, we here provide a detailed historical overview of the names applied to those areas to avoid that Ghana will be erroneously applied to some parts of Ivory Coast (Uetz & Hosek, 2006; see Mochlus guineensis). The French Protectorate of Côte d’Or was established in 1842 on the territories of Grand Bassam and Assinie, the westernmost part of a coastal area in West Africa beginning at Grand Bassam and extending through Assinie but also including some parts of what is now Ghana and Togo. This region was known to European merchant sailors and geographers as Côte d’Or since the 18 th century, when Côte d’Or was only a geographical part of Africa and not a political unit. The British Gold Coast (now Ghana) was later created in 1874, and even then for a long time was limited to the coastal area around Accra. The French colony of Ivory Coast was established in 1893 (11 years after Chaper’s travel and nine years after the publications of Vaillant [1884a,b]), and included both the French Protectorate of Côte d’Or and new inland territories recently explored. The “rivière Assinie” as mentioned in Vaillant (1884b) designated the mouth of the Aby lagoon in actual Ivory Coast. Thus without any doubt the above specimens collected by Chaper originated actually from the Ivory Coast and not from Ghana (contrary Uetz & Hosek, 2016). In its collections the MNHN-RA possess four specimens labelled as E. chaperi, respectively MNHN-RA 6456, MNHN-RA 2007.2444 (formerly MNHN-RA 6456A), MNHN-RA 2007.2445 (formerly MNHN-RA 6456B), and MNHN-RA 2007.2446 (formerly MNHN 6456C). We compared morphometric (snout-vent length, tail length) and diagnostic scalation characters (lamellae under the fourth toe, keels in the paravertebral row at midbody in adult specimens) of those specimens with the data indicated in the original and subsequent description of E. chaperi and in relevant literature for their identification (Vaillant, 1884a,b; Greer et al., 1985; Trape et al., 2012). There are only two lygosomine skink species occurring in Ivory Coast similar in shape and scalation to E. chaperi, Mochlus brevicaudis (Greer et al., 1985) and Mochlus guineensis (W. Peters, 1879). We compared our four Chaper specimens with available data on those species (Greer et al., 1985; Trape et al., 2012) to assess their identity. Mochlus sundevalli (A. Smith) is absent from that area (Trape et al., 2012) and restricted to the southern part of Africa.