Xanthodisca Aurivillius, 1925

Cock, Matthew J. W., Congdon, T. Colin E. & Collins, Steve C., 2016, Observations on the biology of Afrotropical Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera). Part 9. Hesperiinae incertae sedis: Zingiberales feeders, genera of unknown biology and an overview of the Hesperiinae incertae sedis, Zootaxa 4066 (3), pp. 201-247 : 219

Xanthodisca Aurivillius, 1925

This genus was introduced by Aurivillius (1925) for Astictopterus vibius Hewitson and Pamphila rega Mabille , which at that time was considered a subspecies of vibius . Up until then, vibius had been treated as a species of Pardaleodes , and Evans (1937) considered Xanthodisca to be closely allied to Pardaleodes . Evans added two species to the genus: Pardaleodes astrape from West and central Africa and Pamphila ariel Mabille , a Madagascan endemic. Carcasson (1981) and Ackery et al. (1995) treated X. vibius and X. rega as distinct species, and Larsen (2005) confirmed that they overlap in distribution in Cameroon.

The late T.B. Larsen (pers. comm. 2015) re-examined the members of the genus, and concluded that X. ariel probably belongs to one of the Madagascan endemic genera ( Perrotia or Miraja ), whereas astrape is not related to any other genus, so he planned to describe new genus to hold it. The food plants of ariel are unknown but Larsen suggests they will be found to be bamboos, whereas X. vibius and X. rega feed on Aframomum spp. ( Zingiberaceae ) and X. astrape feeds on Marantaceae , and is treated below in the section on Marantaceae feeders. Contrary to what Aurivillius (1925) and Evans (1937) thought, Xanthodisca is not closely related to Pardaleodes , a grass-feeding genus treated in Cock & Congdon (2014), rather it shows clear affinities with the other Zingiberaceae-feeders treated here, especially Semalea (above).