Pterourus menatius pichincha, Bollino & Racheli, 2025

Pterourus menatius pichincha ssp. nov.

( Fig. 1 A-1D, 2)

ZooBank:https://zoobank.org/ A6E2677A-F8E3-4F67-9D84-63CAECC484F5

Holotype, ♂ ( Fig. 1 A-1B), Ecuador – Pichincha / Nanegalito / mt. 800 October 1998 / currently housed in the private collection of Maurizio Bollino (Lecce, Italy), and will be deposited in Museo di Storia naturale del Salento (Calimera, Italy).

Paratype s (2 ♂)

- 1 ♂, Ecuador – Esmeraldas / cantón San Lorenzo / sector San Francisco / m 200, Lgt. E. Aldas, in coll. Euclides Aldaz (Ambato, Ecuador) ;

- 1 ♂, Ecuador – Pichincha / La Esperanza - 800 m / VIII-03 / P. menatius ssp?, in coll. Mark Simon (Gainesville, USA).

Diagnosis. – The new subspecies differs from other nearby subspecies for its smaller size, the discal band of the hindwings (HWs) entering into the cell both dorsally and ventrally, and for the conspicuous HWs red submarginal spots. Pterourus menatius elvirae Séraphin, 2015 , the taxon most similar to the new subspecies, has the discal band of the HWs occasionally entering into the cell but only ventrally, and the submarginal spots on the HWs are yellow, except for the anal spot and that in space 1b.

Description

FW length: 47,5 mm.

Upperside FWs. – Dark brown ground colour; cell with yellowish transverse band with its inner edge in line with CuA 1 and outer edge in line with M 2, slightly suffused with black scales along inner edge; one elongated yellow spot occupies inner half of space 3, and another occupies inner quarter of space 4; submarginal yellowish spots from space 1b to space 8, that in space 1b slightly suffused with red scales, spots gradually changing from rounded to elongated shape, and becoming progressively more suffused with dark scales.

Underside FWs. – Ground colour chocolate-brown; spots as on upperside, except for small oblong postdiscal areas suffused with white scales in spaces 1b and 2, and submarginal spots in spaces 1b, 2 and 3 yellow and more conspicuous.

Upperside HWs. – Ground colour as on FWs; yellow discal band enteringintothe cell witha smallapicalspot, andformed byelongated spots with rounded outer edge; bluish postdiscal spots in spaces 2-4, those in spaces 2 and 3 oval whereas that in space 4 is falciform with internal concavity; band of submarginal spots from space 1b to space 8 slightly falciform with external concavity:those in spaces 1b-5 reddish, and those in spaces 6-8 increasingly suffused with yellowish scales.

Reviewer:

Adam Cotton (Chiang Mai, Thailand) - Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4852-903X

Underside HWs. – Ground colour chocolate-brown. Discal band as on upperside, outer edge bordered with reddish crescents; conspicuous submarginal red spots from space 1b to space 8 plus a thin and minute reddish anal submarginal dot.

Female

The only available image of the female (fig. 2) of the new subspecies was taken on March 19, 2020, by a tourist in the Reserva Los Cedros, Imbabura, NW Ecuador, at an altitude of 1400 m, and sent to us by our friend and colleague Jean-Claude Petit. The specimen, very old and damaged, is visible only from the dorsal side and belongs to the blue-green form, a form also found in other subspecies of the menatius complex.

Derivatio nominis. – A noun in apposition referring to the Ecuadorian province Pichincha, the type-locality of the new subspecies.

Distribution. – To the best of our knowledge, the new subspecies is distributed in the extreme north-west of Ecuador (map 1) at altitudes between 200 and 1400 meters.

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