Published April 23, 2021 | Version v1
Taxonomic treatment Open

Telchinia excelsior subsp. usambarae

  • 1. African Natural History Research Trust, Street Court, Kingsland, Leominster, Herefordshire, HR 6 9 QA, UK & hitoshi. takano @ anhrt. org. uk; https: // orcid. org / 0000 - 0002 - 2627 - 4881
  • 2. African Natural History Research Trust, Street Court, Kingsland, Leominster, Herefordshire, HR 6 9 QA, UK & gyula @ anhrt. org. uk; https: // orcid. org / 0000 - 0001 - 9862 - 8290
  • 3. African Butterfly Research Institute, P. O. Box 14308, 0800 Nairobi, Kenya.

Description

Telchinia excelsior usambarae (Jackson, 1951)

The holotype of this taxon was collected and described by Jackson from the Usambara Mountains and is restricted to north and north-eastern Tanzania (Kielland 1990). Two male specimens from ‘ Lindi’ were included as part of the type series. Three specimens are listed in the catalogue under ‘ Excelsior ’, two males and one female of which only the males could be traced. The two male specimens have the following labels: ‘// Para- / type [white disc with yellow border] // exc. / Lindi [handwritten in Suffert’s hand; label with black border and trimmed at base (illustrated in fig. 4)] // Ex. Coll. / Suffert. / 1912. // Joicey / Bequest. / Brit.Mus. / 1934–120. // ’.

All of the aforementioned specimens carry Suffert’s handwritten labels, some with both an abbreviated species name and locality, suggesting that he either purchased pinned specimens which were unlabelled or more likely, he pinned papered specimens himself and attached his own labels to them. A perusal of the advertisements section in any issue of German entomological journals at the turn of the 20 th Century reveals numerous entomological dealers active in Berlin. It is not known precisely which of the dealerships he frequented but he was certainly a client of Rolle’s Institut Kosmos and Carl Zacher of Kottbusser Strasse 21. Another specimen of an Usambara Mountains endemic butterfly in NHMUK provides some further circumstantial evidence to suggest that an erroneous locality data was provided by the dealership rather than mislabelling by Suffert himself.

Notes

Published as part of Takano, Hitoshi, László, Gyula M. & Collins, Steve C., 2021, Notes on some Tanzanian butterfly specimens in the Suffert Collection: a case of patria falsa, pp. 585-597 in Zootaxa 4964 (3) on page 590, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4964.3.9, http://zenodo.org/record/4715114

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Linked records

Additional details

Biodiversity

References

  • Kielland, J. (1990) Butterflies of Tanzania. Hill House, Melbourne, 363 pp.