Acleros ploetzi Mabille, 1890

Cock, Matthew J. W. & Congdon, Colin E., 2013, Observations on the Biology of Afrotropical Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera). Part 5. Hesperiinae incertae sedis: Dicotyledon Feeders, Zootaxa 3724 (1), pp. 1-85 : 30-31

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.11646/zootaxa.3724.1.1

publication LSID

lsid:zoobank.org:pub:7D05BB2E-4373-4AFB-8DD3-ABE203D3BEC1

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7044044

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/0385994A-FFA3-FFFE-9BFD-F8D6FD0BB87C

treatment provided by

Felipe

scientific name

Acleros ploetzi Mabille, 1890
status

 

Acleros ploetzi Mabille, 1890 View in CoL

This species was originally described as Apaustus leucopygus Plötz from Cameroons, but since the name was preoccupied, Mabille provided the replacement name used. The range of the species extends from West Africa to Kenya, and South to Mozambique.

In Kenya, this species, like the last, is restricted to the rain forests of the West and the Shimba Hills, where according to Sevastopulo (1974) it is not uncommon in the Makardara Forest. In these localities it is not rare, but not usually as common as A. mackenii . The adults come readily to flowers, such as Justicia flava ( Figure 35.2 View FIGURE 35 ).

We have not reared this species, but Sevastapulo (unpublished) has done so from caterpillars on “an unidentified twiner ( Papilionaceae )” in the Shimba Hills, Kenya, although he did not publish this food plant record ( Sevastopulo 1974, 1975, 1981). Larsen (1991) and Ackery et al. (1995) give the food plant as an unidentified Fabaceae . Vuattoux (1999) reared one specimen from caterpillars collected on cultivated cowpea, Vigna unguiculata , in Côte d’Ivoire.

Checking Sevastopulo’s (unpublished) illustrations and descriptions we can see no significant difference from MJWC’s observations on A. mackenii (above). Sevastopulo (unpublished) stated that the pupa is formed “between two spun-together leaves”, but his photographs show a shelter similar to that described below for A. mackenii , except that the distal part of the leaf is not cut away.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Insecta

Order

Lepidoptera

Family

Hesperiidae

Genus

Acleros

GBIF Dataset (for parent article) Darwin Core Archive (for parent article) View in SIBiLS Plain XML RDF