Kongmingius H.Z. Li & Z. Liu

Kongmingius H.Z. Li & Z. Liu subgen. nov. (ĭ"ĸ亚n)

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:8F0A5443-83D3-4636-9178-CBD41BCA2586

Type species: Castalius ananda de Nicéville, [1884]

Diagnosis. This new subgenus can be separated from Tarucus (Tarucus) by:

(1) Black discocellular spot on the male forewing upperside is absent but present in T. ( Tarucus ).

(2) Underside markings are more prominent than T. ( Tarucus ).

(3) Cilia are black, sometimes mixed with white, whereas they are clearly divided into black inside and white outside in T. ( Tarucus ).

Etymology. The subgeneric name honors Kongming, the courtesy name of Zhuge Liang, a statesman, strategist, and inventor during the Three Kingdoms period of China. The name is formed by latinizing the pinyin transcription of Kongming with masculine suffix - ius (Article 37 of Appendix D of ICZN 3 rd Edition). It is a noun in the nominative singular (Article 11.8 of ICZN 4 th Edition).

Species included. T. (K.) ananda and T. (K.) waterstradti .

Remarks. (1) The Ethiopian thespis -group are excluded from the diagnosis due to their strikingly different wing patterns as noted by many previous taxonomists, and likely belong to a new subgenus or even a new genus ( Bethune-Baker 1918; Evans 1955; Stempffer 1942; 1967). (2) This new subgenus, namely the Oriental ananda - group, is similar to the Australian fasciatus -group but can be distinguished from the latter by the discontinuous pattern of spots on the wing undersides ( Bethune-Baker 1918). Recently, the fasciatus -group has also been confirmed to belong to the genus Tarucus by Zhang et al. (2023b) but weather the two groups represent the same subgenus needs future study. (3) In the new subgenus, both larval (instar uncertain) and pupal stages exhibit distinct dark-colored patches on their dorsal and subdorsal areas. In contrast, species belonging to subgenus Tarucus display only a simple dorsal midline, which is yellowish in larvae and dark in pupae, accompanied by minute scattered spots ( Maschwitz et al. 1985; Basu et al. 2019; Inayoshi 2025; Kunte et al. 2025).