Colotis halimede australis ( Talbot, 1939 )

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2014, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: family Pieridae, subfamily Pierinae, Journal of Natural History 48 (25 - 26), pp. 1543-1583 : 1557

Colotis halimede australis ( Talbot, 1939)

d’ Abrera 1997: 75 (4 figs of other subspp.). SI: Figure 15a–h.

Forewing length: male 24.0–27.0 mm (mean (n = 5) 25.52 mm, SD = 0.409); female 23.0– 26.5 mm (mean (n = 5) 24.52 mm, SD = 1.003).

Records. This subspecies, endemic to Tanzania, is described as very local in open bush and semi-desert areas in northern and central areas, east to Morogoro ( Kielland 1990, p.58). Included here as a member of the lower slopes fauna based on several specimens from Kilimanjaro, Taveta and Loitokitok in the BMNH, and numerous specimens from Taveta and the “ Tanga –Moshi railway” in OUMNH. Recorded from Taveta (as Teracolus leo ) by Butler (1888, p.92) and Rogers (1913, p.98). More widely, other subspecies of C. halimede occur to the north of Tanzania, from Nigeria to Libya, Arabia, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.

Females are polymorphic in ground colour, white, yellow and piebald. The white form “acaste” (SI: Figure 15e) is represented in the BMNH by a very heavily marked specimen from Loitokitok, collected by Jackson in 1905.