Acraea oncaea Hopffer, 1855

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 : 2522

[ Acraea oncaea Hopffer, 1855 ]

Larsen 1996: pl. 54, fig. 685i,ii. d ’ Abrera 1997: 129 (4 figs). Bernaud and Murphy 2014: 144 (8 figs, Malawi). SI: Figure 10a – f.

Forewing length: male 23.5 – 29.5 mm [mean (n = 8) 26.05 mm, SD = 1.764]; female 21.0 – 28.0 mm [mean (n = 10) 25.13 mm, SD = 1.641].

Note: this species is sexually dimorphic for wing size, shape and coloration. Males are consistently semi-transparent orange with black spots, the females variable, often olivaceous or dun coloured, and almost invariably with a pale preapical bar on the forewing; however, some females have this bar weakly expressed and can then approximate the male coloration. Van Son (1963, p. 84) stated that (in South Africa at least) ‘ females are usually smaller than males ’; however, while the mean forewing length of the females in our small samples is about 4% less than that of the males, there is considerable overlap.