Amauris (Amaura) ellioti altumi van Someren, 1929

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2015, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: Nymphalidae subfamilies Libytheinae, Danainae, Satyrinae and Charaxinae, Journal of Natural History 50, pp. 865-904 : 873

Amauris (Amaura) ellioti altumi van Someren, 1929

d ’ Abrera 1997: 193 (1 fig., of A. ellioti ellioti ). SI: Figure 6a – d.

Forewing length: male 39 – 43 mm [mean (n = 8) 40.94 mm, SD = 0.971]; female 40 – 44 mm [mean (n = 3) 42.33 mm, SD = 0.850].

Records

According to Kielland (1990, p. 74), A. ellioti Butler, 1895 , is represented in Tanzania by a single subspecies, A. e. junia Le Cerf, 1920, which flies in montane forests at 1100 – 2400 m in the northern highlands (including Kilimanjaro), and in eastern, southern and southwestern areas, including the Uluguru Mountains south to Songea, and thence west to Mt Rungwe and Tukuyu. Aurivillius (1910a, p. 2) recorded a pair of this species (as A. ansorgei Sharpe , now restricted as a race of ellioti from parts of Kenya and Uganda) from Kilimanjaro, Kibong ’ oto, 2000 m. However, Liseki (2009) did not encounter this species on the mountain and, apart from a male collected by Cooper at Moshi, 2500 ft, noted by Talbot (1940, p. 335), there does not appear to be any other Kilimanjaro material of this species in the BMNH. No material was found in OUMNH. Given that Talbot saw a distinction between the two subspecies (altumi with submarginal spots on hindwing, junia without), there is some uncertainty regarding the subspecific name to apply to the Kilimanjaro population of A. ellioti . Provisionally, we have followed Talbot (and de Jong and Congdon 1993; and Ackery et al. 1995) rather than Kielland. So we consider that A. e. altumi flies from Kilimanjaro northwards to Mt Kenya, and thence west to Uganda east of the Rift Valley ( Talbot 1940, p. 335). Amauris ellioti has four recognized subspecies, all of which are restricted to highlands in eastern Africa ( Ackery et al. 1995, p. 274).