Acraea neobule Doubleday, 1847

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 : 2529

Acraea neobule Doubleday, 1847

Larsen 1996: pl. 56, fig. 708i,ii (as A. neobule neobule ). d ’ Abrera 1997: 129 (5 figs; as A. neobule neobule and A. n. arabica ). Bernaud and Murphy 2014: 140 (8 figs, Malawi). SI: Figure 16a – d.

Forewing length: male 23.0 – 31.0 mm [mean (n = 9) 26.67 mm, SD = 2.253]; female 24.0 – 33.5 mm [mean (n = 7) 29.29 mm, SD = 3.146].

Note: the date for this name is widely cited as ‘ 1850 ’ but, as correctly indicated by Ackery et al. (1995, p. 240), the name first appeared on plate 19 of the first volume of ‘ Doubleday and Westwood ’, dated at 1847 by Hemming (1941). Pierre and Bernaud (2014) regard this species as monotypic, demoting all names and subspecies listed by, for example, Ackery et al. (1995) as synonyms or infrasubspecifics – but, in the case of Acraea arabica Rebel, 1899 , at least, this may not be correct ( Larsen 1983; d ’ Abrera 1997, p. 134). The sexes are similar, but the ground colour of the female hindwing is generally slightly paler, more buff than the orange of the male.