Genus Pyrops Spinola, 1839

Pyrops Spinola, 1839: 231 . Type species: Pyrops candelaria (Linnaeus, 1758) by subsequent designation by Duponchel (1840: 200).

Hotinus Amyot & Serville, 1843: 490 . Type species: Pyrops candelaria (Linnaeus, 1758) by original designation.

The candelaria species group

The characters of this group mainly follow Baker’s (1925: 348) definition:

(1) cephalic process long and slender, usually strongly upcurved, sometimes oblique to nearly straight; (2) apex of cephalic process compressed laterally, rarely very slightly swelling at apex;

(3) tegmina with transverse bands or transversely aligned spots or markings;

(4) hind wings variously coloured.

The group contains the type species of the genus Pyrops, P. candelaria, and is the most species-rich group within the genus. Nagai & Porion (1996) listed 25 species in the group and more recently a number of species were added: P. rogersi (Distant, 1906) was transferred from the pyrorhynchus species group by Constant & Mohan (2017), P. maquilinganus (Baker, 1925) was transferred from the effusus species group by Constant (2015) and eight additional species were described: P. auratus Constant, 2021, P. azureus Constant & Mohan, 2017, P. jasmini Chew Kea Foo, Porion & Audibert, 2010, P. jiangfenglingensis Wang, Xu & Qin, 2018, P. kozlovi Porion & Audibert, 2020, P. nishiguroi Nagai, Porion & Audibert, 2017, P. nishiyamai Nagai & Porion, 2002 and P. priscillae Nagai, Porion & Audibert, 2016 (Bourgoin 2021) . Finally, Pyrops lathburii (Kirby, 1818) is here transferred to the candelaria species group, from the pyrorrhynchus species group.

It is widely distributed in the Oriental Region: from Sri Lanka it extends over northern India, southern China, Taiwan, all Indochina, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia southwards to Sulawesi.

The pyrorhynchus species group

The pyrorhynchus species group, as defined by Baker (1925: 347), contains species characterized by: (1) large, stout, elongate body;

(2) long stout cephalic process, not tapering apically, with width in dorsal view about equal along distal ⅘ and height in lateral view about equal along distal ⅘; upper margin in lateral view abruptly bent beyond mid-length (apical part often slightly higher in lateral view); apically brightly coloured, yellow to red; (3) anteocular carina slightly extending on vertex;

(4) hind wings bright blue on basal ⅓, with apex and posterior margin broadly black.

According to Baker (1925), the group contained P. incertus Schmidt, 1923, P. pyrorhynchus (Donovan, 1800) and P. pythicus (Distant, 1891) . Lallemand (1963) added seven species to the group by broadening its interpretation without providing any justification, and Nagai & Porion (1996) followed his views. More recently, Constant & Mohan (2017) transferred one of these species, P. rogersi (Distant, 1906), from the pyrorhynchus to the candelaria group, and two additional ones, P. lathburii (Kirby, 1818) and P. astarte (Distant, 1914), are synonymized and moved to the candelaria group in the present work. As a result, the pyrorhynchus group currently contains the following taxa: P. pythicus pythicus, P. pythicus incertus (Schmidt, 1923), P. ruehli (Schmidt, 1926), P. intricatus (Walker, 1957), P. intricatus albobasalis (Lallemand, 1963), P. zephyrius (Schmidt, 1907) and P. dohrni (Schmidt, 1905) . The status of both latter species will need to be assessed in the future as they do not fully agree with Baker’s (1925) definition, for example, the basal third of the posterior wings is not bright blue.