Spialia mangana Rebel, 1899

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 : 337

Spialia mangana Rebel, 1899

De Jong (1978) placed S. mangana in the delagoae group of Spialia species. It was described from Yemen (Rebel 1899) and its range extends from the southern Arabian Peninsula through Ethiopia, Somalia and north-western Kenya and Uganda (De Jong 1978), with outlying populations in northern Oman (Feulner 2007) and the United Arab Emirates ( UAE) (Feulner & Roobas 2014). This is a little known species and the food plants and life history are unknown. Feulner & Roobas (2014) state that ‘circumstantial evidence points most strongly towards’ the food plant in Oman and UAE being Melhania muricata (a name absent from Tropicos 2015 and unresolved in The Plant List 2015). This is based on the fact that S. zebra feed on Melhania spp., and M. muricata is the only ‘Sterculiaceae’ found where S. mangana was found. Given that Melhania spp. are now considered to be Malvaceae , which incorporates Sterculiaceae (see Introduction), and that S. mangana and S. zebra are members of the delagoae group, whose food plants include Hermannia spp., Hibiscus spp. and Pavonia spp. ( Table 2), then although M. muricata may well prove to be a food plant, other low-growing Malvaceae found in these localised areas of Oman and UAE, also should be considered potential food plants.