Acraea johnstoni Godman, 1885

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2018, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: Nymphalidae subfamily Helconiinae, Journal of Natural History 52 (39 - 40), pp. 2511-2552 : 2537

Acraea johnstoni Godman, 1885

Larsen 1996: pl. 53, fig. 658i – iii (as A. johnstoni johnstoni ). d ’ Abrera 1997: 163 (5 figs; as A. johnstoni johnstoni ). Bernaud and Murphy 2014: 127 (8 figs, Malawi). SI: Figures 25g – j, 26a – j.

Forewing length: male 24.0 – 31.0 mm [mean (n = 15) 28.15 mm, SD = 1.554]; female 29.5 – 37.0 mm [mean (n = 7) 32.64 mm, SD = 1.833].

Note: The polymorphism of this species appears at first sight unimodal (in the sense of Vane-Wright 1975) – but, as pointed out by Carpenter (1931), there is apparently a form with spots in the forewing pale yellow area that is male-limited. Named forms represented in both sexes on Kilimanjaro include ‘ johnstoni ’ (which varies considerably in hindwing ‘ window ’ colour, from white to orange), ‘ confusa ’ (of which ‘ flavescens ’ surely represents no more than the yellowish extreme), and the overall orange ‘ fulvescens ’; we have seen no Kilimanjaro material of ‘ pretiosa ’ (arguably a distinctive variant of ‘ fulvescens ’).