Charaxes (Charaxes) violetta melloni Fox, 1963

Henning 1989: 187 (4 figs). SI: Figure 27a – d.

Forewing length: male 36 – 45 mm [mean (n = 13) 40.83 mm, SD = 1.748]; female 37.5 – 49.5 mm [mean (n = 12) 44.54 mm, SD = 2.527]. For C. v. maritima, van Someren (1966, p. 52) gave male forewing length as 36 mm, female as 44 mm.

Note: van Someren ’ s (1966) treatment of Tanzanian C. violetta Grose-Smith, 1885, seems ambiguous (see discussion in Henning 1989, p. 186). Kielland (1990) deals with two subspecies, C. v. maritima van Someren, 1966, from coastal areas of Tanzania and Kenya, and C. v. melloni Fox, 1963, from inland eastern Kenya, Tanzania and further south. However, he suggests that, other than smaller size of the coastal populations, there is little to separate the two populations. This seems borne out by the fact that specimens in BMNH from Arusha and Moshi are regarded as subsp. melloni, whereas van Someren (1966, p. 54) attributed Taveta material to subsp. maritima. Taveta lies less than 50 km to the east of Moshi, and both are situated at much the same elevation. Here we treat the Kilimanjaro populations under the older of the two names – and they have not been differentiated in making the forewing length estimates reported above. For comparison, Henning (1989, p. 187,188) provides images of C. v. maritima, with discussion of what he considers to be its distinguishing characteristics. Larsen (1996, pl. 35, figs 471i,ii) shows a male from coastal Kenya, as C. v. maritimus [sic].

Records

Occurs in forests and thickets at 300 – 1700 m through much of inland eastern Tanzania (i.e. other than the coastal area), westwards to Mt Meru and Mt Kilimanjaro, and south to Tukuyu (Kielland 1990, p. 110). The type locality of melloni is Nguru Mountains. OUMNH has two males and a female from Taveta, c. 2500 ft, collected May 1905 by Rogers. The BMNH has a male collected at Rau Forest, 2500 ft, 5 December 1943, and another from Moshi, collected by J.J.S. Dudgeon. Not encountered by Liseki (2009), this taxon is included here as a member of the lower slopes fauna. Outside Tanzania C. v. melloni occurs in parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Nominate C. violetta is limited to southern Mozambique; a fourth subspecies is restricted to central Kenya (Ackery et al. 1995, p. 461).