Colotis evarne (Klug, 1829)

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2014, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: family Pieridae, subfamily Pierinae, Journal of Natural History 48 (25 - 26), pp. 1543-1583 : 1548-1549

Colotis evarne (Klug, 1829)

Kielland 1990: 267, 3 figs (as C. aurora dissociatus , misidentification?). Larsen 1996: pl. 7, figs 63 i,ii (as C. eucharis evarne ). d’ Abrera 1997: 81 (2 figs, as C. aurora evarne ). SI: Figure 5a–j.

Forewing length: male 18.0–23.0 mm (mean (n = 10) 20.63 mm, SD = 1.154); female 17.0–23.0 mm (mean (n = 11) 20.09 mm, SD = 1.310).

Records. Nazari et al. (2011) separate C. aurora (Cramer, 1780, from Asia = C. eucharis (Fabricius, 1775) , invalid homonym) and C. evarne (from Africa) as distinct species. According to Ackery et al. (1995, p.185, as C. aurora evarne ), evarne does not occur further south than Uganda and Kenya. Larsen (1996, p.134, as C. eucharis evarne ) states that, although common in most of Kenya, to the south of the country it is replaced by C. incretus (see below). Kielland (1990) figures what appears to be C. evarne as C. aurora dissociatus (see above), which we presume was a mislabelling – although, at the same time, he also refers in his text to an illustration by D’ Abrera (1980), as C. eucharis dissociatus , which does seem to be genuine dissociatus, not evarne . As Kielland does not give provenance for his images, and he says of dissociatus that it occurs in most parts of Tanzania, it would appear uncertain whether true evarne occurs in Tanzania and, if it does, whether or not it occurs in the Kilimanjaro area ( Talbot 1939, p.223, simply lists “ Tanganyika Territory ” as part of the range of “ eucharis evarne ”).

However, examination of the BMNH collection as arranged by Talbot reveals two lots of material from Kilimanjaro and adjacent regions grouped separately as C. eucharis evarne f. “evarne” and C. eucharis evarne f. “citreus” ( Ackery et al. 1995, p.185, list Teracolus citreus Butler as a synonym of C. aurora evarne ). The former lot includes four males from Ngaserai, West Kilimanjaro, collected by Cooper at “ 3000 ft ” in May 1937, together with three females from Taveta. The second lot includes one female ex Cooper from Ngaserai (same data as males above), a pair from West Kilimanjaro collected by Cooper at “ 4500–5000 ft ” during May–July 1938, old material of two males and a female from Kilimanjaro (probably the material recorded from slopes of Kilimanjaro by Butler 1888, p.92, as Teracolus citreus ), and two males and two females from Taveta. We have illustrated five of these specimens (SI). On this basis we include C. evarne as a member of the lower slopes fauna. This is consistent with the map given by Bernardi (1989: map 4) showing C. evarne (as aurora evarne ) extending south through the northern half of Tanzania.

Males vary in the extent of the width of the dark margin of the upperside forewing (in some cases practically obsolete) and in the presence or absence of the minute dark cell spot on the underside of the hindwing. Females vary in the extent and intensity of the upperside dark markings, and are also essentially dimorphic for orange or not orange at the forewing tip – although some largely white specimens do have a hint of orange, and are therefore somewhat intermediate. The full extent of the range of this species needs to be re-assessed.