Spialia doris doris Walker, 1870

Cock, Matthew J. W., 2016, Observations on the biology of Afrotropical Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera) with particular reference to Kenya. Part 10. Pyrginae, Carcharodini, Zootaxa 4173 (4), pp. 301-350 : 336

Spialia doris doris Walker, 1870

Spialia doris doris is the only representative of the phlomidis group of Spialia in Kenya (De Jong 1978). It was described from ‘Tajora’ [Tadjoura, Djibouti] (Walker 1870) and is found in Arabia and north-eastern Africa. De Jong (1978) records a single male of this species from Kenya, from the Tana River between Garissa and Bura . A second subspecies, amenophis (Reverdin), is restricted to Egypt, a third, daphne Evans, occurs in Mauretania and south-western Morocco, and a fourth, evanida (Butler) is found from southern Iran to Gujurat , India (Evans 1949, De Jong 1978, Larsen 2005). Obviously extremely rare in collections from Kenya, this species in Kenya is likely to be associated with sub-desert rocky conditions.

Although the life history in Kenya is unknown, and has not been documented elsewhere for any subspecies, there are records of food plants for ssp. amenophis and ssp. doris . Graves (1925) records Convolvulus lanatus as the food plant of ssp. amenophis in desert in northeast Egypt, noting that ‘this Convolvulus is very conspicuous in April and May, when it flowers, the extremely white petals being visible at an appreciable distance’. Most records for ssp. doris relate to species of Convolvulaceae , but it is also known to feed on at least one Malvaceae . In Qatar, Pittaway (1980) reported ‘one female was seen investigating Corchorus depressus , a possible food plant’ and in his subsequent work on the butterflies of western Saudi Arabia (Pittaway 1985) he includes Corchorus sp. as a food plant. Corchorus depressus is a prostate plant with rigid crooked branches, found on stony ground in hills and on detritus in lower wadis (Western 1989). Convolvulaceae food plants include C. hystrix and other Convolvulus sp. in western Saudi Arabia (Pittaway 1985), and Ipomoea imperati (= I. stolonifera ) by implication in the Sinai Peninsula (Benyamini 1984). There do not seem to be any food plant records from further south in Africa, and Larsen (1991, 2005) repeats these food plant records.