Colotis danae eupompe (Klug, 1829)

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2014, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: family Pieridae, subfamily Pierinae, Journal of Natural History 48 (25 - 26), pp. 1543-1583 : 1553

Colotis danae eupompe (Klug, 1829)

Larsen 1996: pl. 7, figs 62 i–iii. d’ Abrera 1997: 81 (3 figs). SI: Figures 10g –j; 11a–h.

Forewing length: male 22.5–27.0 mm (mean (n = 6) 24.48 mm, SD = 1.217); female 21.0–26.0 mm (mean (n = 8) 23.01 mm, SD = 1.490).

Usage of the name Papilio danae Fabricius, 1775 , for this species has recently been conserved (Opinion 2279). Kielland (1990) included Tanzanian populations under the subspecies C. d. pseudacaste (Butler, 1876) , but Nazari et al. (2011) have recently synonymized this taxon under the older name C. d. eupompe (Klug, 1829), a decision followed here.

Records. For Tanzania, Kielland (1990, p.57) described this butterfly as common in deciduous woods and shrubland at 500–1700 m, with records from Kigoma, Mpanda, Rukwa Basin, Ufipa Plateau, lower parts of Northern Highlands, Nguu Mts, Uluguru Mts, Mikumi NP, Ruaha NP, Dodoma area, and Rubeho Mts south to Chimala. Included here as a member of the lower slopes fauna on the basis of many specimens from Taveta and Kilimanjaro in BMNH, and additional material from Taveta in OUMNH. Butler (1888, p.92) recorded C. danae from the slopes of Kilimanjaro under the synonym Teracolus miles Butler, 1883, as well as under the name T. pseudacaste . Beyond Tanzania, this subspecies extends to Ethiopia and west along the southern fringes of the Sahara to Mauritania and Senegal ( Ackery et al. 1995, p.187); the species as a whole occurs in almost all of Africa, and through Arabia to India ( Larsen 1996, p.134).

Males sometimes have the upperside forewing tips yellow instead of red (SI: Figure 9i), but the females are more variable. In addition to differences in amount of black and, in some individuals, loss of red forewing tips, females are also dimorphic for white/yellow ground-colour. Although we have not seen yellow females from Kilimanjaro it seems likely that they occur there. Loss of forewing red tip combined with upperside white ground colour is called female form “depurpurata”; there is a specimen from Taveta in OUMNH, and one from Kilimanjaro in BMNH (SI: Figure 10c) .

GROUP VI