Melitaea phoebe emipunica Verity 1919

Melitaea phoebe emipunica Verity 1919 View in CoL

[TL: Italy, Sicily, Palermo]: there are four male and one female specimens present in the Museo Zoologico de “La Specola” dell’Università, Firenza, Italy (cf. RUSSELL & BARTOLOZZI, 2019: Fig. 1). The male, which was figured by VERITY (1950: 152; Tav. 43: fig. 63) and given more accurate locality data: “San Martino della Scala m. 800 (Monreale Palermo); 5 V”, is here designated as the lectotype of Melitaea phoebe emipunica ( Figs 12a, b). The squat triangular submarginal black markings barely touching the black intervening veins ( Fig. 12b) clearly place the taxon emipunica with M. ornata . M. phoebe has not so far been proven to occur in Sicily ( RUSSELL, 2018: 258). The labels on the pin ( Fig. 12c) are as follows: black print on yellow paper “Monreale (San Martino)m. 800/ PALERMO ISOLA di SICILIA/ 6 Maggio 1919 Querci”; black print on white paper “Ex coll. R. Verity”; black print on pink paper “Syntypus”; printed on yellow paper “FIGURATO DA/ R. VERITY FARF. D. IT./ TAV. 43 (hand-written)/ FIG. 63 (hand-written)”; Black print on red paper “ Melitaea ornata / emipunica Verity 1919 / LECTOTYPUS/ P. RUSSELL & L. BARTOLOZZI 2019”. Both VAN OORSCHOT & COUTSIS (2014) and RUSSELL & TENNENT (2016) agreed with this determination.