Tagiades menaka hainana Sonan, 1938

Chiba, Hideyuki, Hsu, Yu-Feng, Tsukiyama, Hiroshi, Lo, Philip Yik-Fui, Chen, Chien-Ren & Wang, Shou-Ming, 2009, Jinhaku Sonan’s skipper type collection deposited at Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae), Zootaxa 2202, pp. 48-58 : 57

Tagiades menaka hainana Sonan, 1938

Trans. nat. Hist. Soc. Formosa 28: 370, fig. 1.

Labels: “ Tagiades / menaka /hainana Sonan DET. J. SONAN,” “Ling-sui/Hainan/ 1930/COL. J. SONAN,” “menata,” “hainana/Sonan,” “Holo/ Type [in red],” “HES(3)”

Sonan (1938a) specified just one male specimen when he described Tagiades menaka hainana , thus it represents the holotype of the taxon. The unique type (holotype) of the taxon was found in TARI ( Fig. 37–39 ), and the specimen conforms to the original description and associated figure in Sonan (1938a) although the collecting year was “1908” in the original description but “1930” on the label. Evans (1949) intended to list hainana as a synonym of Tagiades menaka menaka (Moore, 1865) , but the name hainana was in the index of his catalogue and not in the text. The characteristics of the holotype, however, do not agree with those of T. menaka . Instead, the holotype possesses diagnostic characters of T. japetus (Stoll, 1782) defined by Evans (1949) and Tsukiyama (1980) as it has no hyaline spot in front of spots at the end of discoidal cell and a prominent hyaline spot in cell M3 and Cu1 of the forewing ( Fig. 37–38 ). The wing markings of the specimen are generally similar to those of the wet season form of T. j. ravi Moore, 1865, but differ from it by possessing a white hindwing fringe instead of brown. Although it is difficult to accept the fact that this rather common skipper is represented by a single specimen, there is no specific evidence that it was mislabelled. Thus the name hainana may be used as the valid subspecific name for populations of T. japetus (status revised) inhabiting the island pending further research.

Figures

FIGURES 19 – 39. Types of skipper taxa described by Jinhaku Sonan: 19 – 21, paratype of Augiades bouddha niitakana, upperside, underside, labels; 22 – 24, holotype of Parnara kotoshona, upperside, underside, labels; 25 – 27, holotype of Parnara ranrunna, upperside, underside, labels; 28 – 30, holotype of Pamara kiraizana, upperside, underside, labels; 31 – 33, holotype of Gangara thyrsis hainana, upperside, underside, labels; 34 – 36, holotype of Telicota palmarum hainanum, upperside, upperside, labels; 37 – 39, holotype of Tagiades menaka hainana, upperside, underside, labels.