Alucita malawica Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016

Alucita malawica Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016 View in CoL

Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016a: 543 ( Type locality: Nkhorongo , Malawi) .

Alucita meloui Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016b: 889 View in CoL . ( Type locality: Diego Suarez,

Madagascar) syn.nov.

Alucita priona Bippus, 2020: 73 View in CoL . ( Type locality: Réunion, La Possession) syn.nov.

Material examined. 1 ♂ ETHIOPIA, Southern Nations, Arba Minch, Dorze Lodge , 6.1796 N, 37.5799E, 2348 m, 20-23. IV. 2012, R. Beck leg. GoogleMaps

Distribution: Malawi, Madagascar, Reunion, Ethiopia (new species for Ethiopia).

Note. We described the new species of many-plumed moth from Malawi and published in Zootaxa Journal in June 2016 ( Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich 2016a), while the species A. meloui was described and published later, in December 2016, in Entomologicheskoe obozrenie Journal ( Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich 2016b). Comparing the external characters of the adults and genitals of A. malawica and A. meloui , we found their complete conspecificity, and as the description of A. malawica had been published before that of A. meloui , the latter becomes a synonym of it. The other species, A. priona , described from Reunion ( Bippus 2020) as well as A. meloui is completely identical to A. malawica externally and in the genitals, so it becomes a synonym to the latter.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Robert Beck (Munich, Germany) for the materials provided for examination. We also express our gratitude to Anna Ustjuzhanina ( Tomsk, Russia) for the language improvements and to Sergey Reshetnikov ( Novosibirsk, Russia) for the photos of the adults.

References

Bippus, M. ( 2020) Records of Lepidoptera from the Malagasy region with description of new species (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae, Noctuidae, Alucitidae, Choreutidae, Euteliidae, Gelechiidae, Blastobasidae, Pterophoridae, Tonzidae, Tineidae, Praydidae, Cosmopterigidae, Batrachedridae). Phelsuma, 28, 60−100.

De Prins, J. & De Prins, W. ( 2011–2023) Afromoths, online database of Afrotropical moth species (Lepidoptera). Available from: http://www.afromoths.net/ (accessed December 2023)

Ustjuzhanin, P. & Kovtunovich, V. ( 2016 a) The Alucitidae (Lepidoptera) of Malawi with descriptions of five new species. Zootaxa, 4126 ( 4), 533–547. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4126.4.5

Ustjuzhanin, P. & Kovtunovich, V. ( 2016 b) Two New Species of the Many-Plumed Moth Genus Alucita Linnaeus (Lepidoptera, Alucitidae) from Madagascar. Entomologicheskoe Obozrenie, 95 ( 4), 889–891. [In Russian]

Ustjuzhanin, P., Kovtunovich, V., Ustjuzhanina, A. ( 2018) New species of many-plumed moths (Lepidoptera: Alucitidae) from Tanzania. Zootaxa, 4438 ( 1), 167–175.

https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4438.1.9