Charaxes (Eriboea) tavetensis tavetensis Rothschild, 1894

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2015, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: Nymphalidae subfamilies Libytheinae, Danainae, Satyrinae and Charaxinae, Journal of Natural History 50, pp. 865-904 : 885

Charaxes (Eriboea) tavetensis tavetensis Rothschild, 1894

Henning 1989: 220, 4 figs (as etesipe tavetensis ). Kielland 1990: 287, 3 figs. SI: Figure 18e – h.

Forewing length: male 36 – 42 mm [mean (n = 7) 39.37 mm, SD = 1.631]; female 41 – 47 mm [mean (n = 2) 44.20 mm, SD = 1.414]. van Someren (1966, p. 62) gave male forewing length as 38 – 41 mm, female as 40 – 44 mm.

Note: see Appendix 5 regarding the name and status of this taxon. In females, the pale hindwing band varies from off white through cream to pale yellow.

Records

Mt Meru and lower slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro (the type locality is Taveta) to the Usambaras and south to Rondo Plateau (near Lindi), the Nguru Mountains, Udzungwa Rift and Kitonga Gorge, at altitudes up to 1500 m ( Kielland 1990, p. 109). There is no Kilimanjaro area material in OUMNH, but it was recorded from Moshi by van Someren (1966, p. 63) – probably based on a single male in BMNH from ‘ 6 miles NW of Moshi ’. Not encountered by Liseki (2009). Beyond Tanzania, subspecies tavetensis occurs in Kenya (coastal region), Malawi, eastern Zimbabwe, and Mozambique to northern regions of South Africa ( Ackery et al. 1995, p. 441). Subspecies C. t. pemba van Someren, 1966, and C. t. shaba Berger, 1981, associated with tavetensis by Kielland (1990), occur on Pemba island and in Lualaba, DRC, respectively. Charaxes etesipe gordoni van Someren, 1936 , from the region of Mt Kenya, which is phenotypically very similar, may also belong with C. tavetensis (see Ackery et al. 1995, p. 441; Larsen 1996, p. 294). Charaxes etesipe (Godart, 1824) occurs to the north and west of the range of C. tavetensis , from Sierra Leone east to Ethiopia and south to Uganda and northwestern Tanzania.