Melitaea phoebe race subtusca Verity, 1952

Melitaea phoebe race subtusca Verity, 1952 View in CoL

[TL: France, Var, La Sainte Baume, Nans-les-Pins, 300 m], the syntypic series consists of seven specimens (4 11 and 3 00) from the Type Locality taken between 24 May 1926 and 24 May 1936 and held in the Museo Zoologico de “La Specola” dell’Università, Firenza, Italy. From an examination of the photographs of the undersides of all seven specimens, it would appear that they include both M. phoebe and M. ornata . A syntype of each species is illustrated for comparison: one male has morphological characters tending towards those of M. ornata (Figs 19a, b); another male has characters closely resembling M. phoebe ( Figs 20a & b). Both are labelled as having been taken on the same day, 24 May 1926 (Figs 19c, 20c), but handwriting on the data labels suggests by different collectors; this raises the possibility that they were captured some distance apart. The only indication of who captured another of the specimens is a label “23-V-[19]33 Nans (Var) Foulquier leg.’’; he must have been accompanied by another collector because there is another label dated ‘Nans 23 Mai [19]33’ again in a different hand! These two simultaneous captures by different collectors could suggest that the two specimens captured on each occasion (24 May 1926 and 23 May 1933) were taken some distance apart but with the nearest location reference for the data labels both being ‘Nans’. It is unsurprising that Gédéon Foulquier (1855-1941) collected on the Massif de la St. Baume since he lived in Marseille, just to the south of the mountain ridge. Currently, it is not possible to reliably place subtusca with either species.

The following Melitaea subspecies described by Fruhstorfer from damp Alpine regions, based on photographs of the syntypes are all M. phoebe , as originally described: koios (1908b), virgilia (1917a), sylleion (1917a), minoa (1917a), and rovia (1919).

Additional subspecies described by Verity and present in the La Specola Museum in Florence, from France, Switzerland and Italy were all examined and confirmed to be Melitaea phoebe : monilata (1919), tusca (1919), crassenigra (1928), subcorythallia (1928), suboccitanica (1928), and medioastricta (1950). The following available names were not considered because of a lack of surviving specimens in what remains of Verity’s collection in Florence: monilataeformis (1919), aethereaeformis (1919), nigroalternans (1919) and postnarenta (1939).