Spialia depauperata Strand, 1911

Cock, Matthew J. W., 2016, Observations on the biology of Afrotropical Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera) with particular reference to Kenya. Part 10. Pyrginae, Carcharodini, Zootaxa 4173 (4), pp. 301-350 : 336

Spialia depauperata Strand, 1911

Like the last, this species is placed in the delagoae group (De Jong 1978). Spialia depauperata was described from Msamwia (Ufipa Plateau, south-western Tanzania) (Strand 1911), and its range extends from around Lake Victoria to South Africa, mostly as ssp. depauperata , but in Zimbabwe and South Africa it is present as ssp. australis De Jong (1978). I collected a pupa from Melhania velutina on the Nairobi-Mombasa road at Machakos junction, and at the time misidentified the resultant adult as S. depauperata depauperata , whereas re-examination showed it to be a rather large female S. zebra bifida . Based on my error, Larsen (1991) listed Melhania as the food plant of S. depauperata depauperata , which is repeated in Heath et al. (2002). It is likely that the records of this food plant in Henning et al. (1997) and Woodhall (2005) as the food plant for ssp. australis in southern Africa are based on Larsen (1991) (S. Woodhall pers. comm. 2015).