Acraea chilo Godman, 1880

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2018, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: Nymphalidae subfamily Helconiinae, Journal of Natural History 52 (39 - 40), pp. 2511-2552 : 2526-2527

Acraea chilo Godman, 1880

Larsen 1996: pl. 55, fig. 700i – iii. d ’ Abrera 1997: 177 (4 figs, two as chilo chilo , two as A. magni fi ca Carpenter and Jackson, 1950 – treated as a synonym of A. chilo by Pierre and Bernaud 2014, but this seems uncertain). SI: Figure 14a – d.

Forewing length: male 25.0 – 35.0 mm [mean (n = 13) 31.05 mm, SD = 2.554]; female 25.5 – 36.0 mm [mean (n = 10) 31.67 mm, SD = 2.707].

Note: this species is sexually dimorphic. Males are invariably orange boldly patterned with black spots, while females are either almost wholly transparent other than small black discal spots and pale submarginal lunules on the hindwing (f. ‘ crystallina ’), or less transparent, with both wings black-spotted, and the hindwings and wing margins partially orange (f. ‘ magnifica ’). Pierre and Bernaud (2014) treat this as a monotypic species. However, apart from the status of magni fi ca, in quite extensive material from Kenya (including Teita and Kibwezi), all females are ‘ crystallina ’ form, while the few Ethiopia and Somalia females we have seen are all of the alternative, orange-infumed form. Moreover, males from Ethiopia and Somalia appear to have more acuminate forewings in comparison to chilo from Kenya and Tanzania, which are more rounded. This shift in wing shape may be the same in females. We suspect but cannot demonstrate that all females from the Kilimanjaro region will prove to be form ‘ crystallina ’.