Charaxes (Polyura) pleione subsp. oriens Plantrou 1989
- 1. Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, Arusha, Tanzania; & Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK;
- 2. Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK; & Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK; & School of Human and Life Sciences, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK
Description
Charaxes (Polyura) pleione oriens Plantrou, 1989
Henning 1989: 369,370 (5 figs). Larsen 1996: pl. 40, fig. 498 i,ii. SI: Figure 13a,b (male); C. p. bebra Rothschild Figure 13c,d (female).
Forewing length: male 25.5 – 32 mm [mean (n = 10) 28.76 mm, SD = 1.432]; female 30 – 33.5 mm [mean (n = 7) 31.86 mm, SD = 0.824].
Note: van Someren (1974, p. 428) gave forewing length for this population (both sexes) as 30 – 32 mm, and suggested that it is slightly larger than Charaxes p. bebra Rothschild and Jordan, 1900, from Uganda and DRC – but our figures hardly bear this out.
Records
Coastal areas inland to Usambara, Nguu and Uluguru mountains, Udzungwa Rift and Magombera Forest, at altitudes up to 1600 m, with a record by Cordeiro (pers. comm. to Kielland) from Rau Forest (Kielland 1990, p. 108). Although not mentioned by Cordeiro (1995), he confirms that he did see this distinctive species in the forest, although it ‘ was very hard to capture ’ (Cordeiro pers. comm. 29 September 2014). There does not appear to be any Kilimanjaro area material in OUMNH or BMNH, and it is therefore not certain that this population does belong to C. p. oriens – which subspecies extends outside Tanzania to coastal areas of Kenya. Collectively, the five named subspecies of C. pleione (Godart, 1824) occur widely across a central belt of Africa, from Sierra Leone east to Kenya, and south to Angola, DRC, Rwanda and Tanzania. The female illustrated (SI: Fig. 13c,d), from western Kenya, represents the similar subspecies Charaxes p. bebra Rothschild, 1900 – which ranges from west Kenya to Uganda and northeastern DRC (Ackery et al. 1995, p. 454 – 455; Larsen 1996, p. 302).
Notes
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Linked records
Additional details
Identifiers
Biodiversity
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Genus
- Charaxes
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Order
- Lepidoptera
- Phylum
- Arthropoda
- Scientific name authorship
- Plantrou
- Species
- oriens
- Taxon rank
- subSpecies
- Taxonomic concept label
- Charaxes (Polyura) pleione subsp. oriens Plantrou, 1989 sec. Liseki & Vane-Wright, 2015
References
- Henning SF. 1989. The Charaxinae Butterflies of Africa. Johannesburg: Aloe.
- Larsen TB. 1996. The Butterflies of Kenya and their Natural History. 2 nd ed. Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press.
- van Someren VGL. 1974. Revisional notes on African Charaxes (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Part IX. Bull Br Mus (Nat Hist) Entomol. 29: 415 - 487, 18 pls.
- Rothschild W, Jordan K. 1900. A monograph of Charaxes and the allied prionopterous genera. Novit Zool. 7: 287 - 524, 5 pls.
- Kielland J. 1990. Butterflies of Tanzania. Melbourne: Hill House.
- Cordeiro NJ. 1995. Interesting distribution records of butterflies from northern Tanzania. Metamorphosis. 6: 194 - 198.
- Ackery PR, Smith CR, Vane-Wright RI, editors. 1995. Carcasson ' s African Butterflies: an annotated catalogue of the Papilionoidea and Hesperioidea of the Afrotropical Region. East Melbourne: CSIRO.