Acraea lycoa Godart, 1819

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 : 2538

Acraea lycoa Godart, 1819

Eltringham 1911: pl. 1, fig. 7. Larsen 1996: pl. 53, fig. 657i,ii (as A. lycoa kenia ). d ’ Abrera 1997: 163 (5 figs, as various ssp.). SI: Figure 25a – f.

Forewing length: male 26.5 – 30.0 mm [mean (n = 4) 28.18 mm, SD = 0.562]; female 26.5 – 33.0 mm [mean (n = 6) 29.62 mm, SD = 1.658].

Note: Eltringham (1911, p. 3) commented regarding A. lycoa : ‘ Passing southwards and eastwards we find at Kilimanjaro the two sexes present much the same pattern, but the ground colour in both sexes is now very dark ’. Eltringham (1912, p. 336 – 337) recognised eight subspecies, and Ackery et al. (1995) listed nine, but Pierre and Bernaud (2014) place all in synonymy, treating A. lycoa as monotypic. Given the geographical variation described by Eltringham (1911, 1912) we have only reluctantly accepted this arrangement (a case in point: the populations in Uganda are markedly sexually dimorphic). If required, the infraspecific name applicable to A. lycoa on Kilimanjaro is A. l. fallax (Rogenhofer, 1891) (= kilimanjarica Oberthür, 1893).