Charonias Röber, 1908

Braby, Michael F. & Nishida, Kenji, 2010, The immature stages, larval food plants and biology of Neotropical mistletoe butterflies (Lepidoptera: Pieridae). II. The Catasticta group (Pierini: Aporiina), Journal of Natural History 44 (29 - 30), pp. 1831-1928 : 1893-1894

Charonias Röber, 1908

Charonias is most closely related to Archonias and was formerly included in that genus ( Klots 1933; Braby et al. 2006). It contains two allopatric species, one ( C. eurytele (Hewitson, [1853])) of which extends from lowland southern Mexico ( de la Maza 1987) to the eastern Andes of central Peru ( D’Abrera 1981; Salazar 2004a). The other species, C. theano (Boisduval, 1836) , is restricted to southern Brazil ( D’Abrera 1981; Lamas 2004). Charonias , as in the preceding genus, generally occurs in the low- to mid-elevation wet tropical forests between 300 m and 1000 m a.s.l. ( DeVries 1987; Salazar 2004a). Beccaloni (1997) demonstrated that C. eurytele eurytele (Hewitson, [1853]) belongs to a large mimicry “tiger complex” which, in Ecuador, comprises 29 species representing species from many different lineages of Lepidoptera , including Papilionidae , Dismorphiinae , Ithomiinae , Danainae , Heliconiinae , Nymphalinae , Charaxinae , Riodinidae and Notodontidae . In this complex, the model ithomiines predominate in species diversity (15 species) and relative abundance (98% of all individuals censured), whereas the mimics such as C. eurytele are comparatively rare and occur in low abundance.

The life history of either species of Charonias has not been recorded, but on account of the close phylogenetic relationship of the genus to Archonias and Catasticta they almost certainly specializes on mistletoes. The record of Antidaphne viscoidea for C. eurytele dismorphites (Butler, 1872) by Beccaloni et al. (2008), based on our observations in Costa Rica, is erroneous and actually refers to Catasticta ctemene .

In Costa Rica, DeVries (1987) noted that C. eurytele dismorphites males perch in and apparently patrol small light gaps about 3 m above ground level during the mornings, presumably to establish mating territories similar to that seen in Archonias . In Colombia, Salazar (2004a) noted that adults of the nominate subspecies fly slowly and visit flowers of Asteraceae ; they also puddle from moist sandy banks. In Peru, we encountered both sexes of C. eurytele eurytele flying in small numbers in shaded areas beneath the canopy of riparian forest during late morning near Tingo María (750 m a.s.l.) in November 2000; in flight the adults flew slowly in the understorey, their wing beats even slower than their model ithomiines.