Charaxes (Charaxes) lasti lasti Grose-Smith, 1889

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 : 890

Charaxes (Charaxes) lasti lasti Grose-Smith, 1889

Henning 1989: 70 (4 figs). Larsen 1996: pl. 32, fig. 453 i,ii. d ’ Abrera 2004: 473 (3 figs). SI: Figure 25a – d.

Forewing length: male 35.5 – 39 mm [mean (n = 5) 37.24 mm, SD = 0.777]; female 39 – 49 mm [mean (n = 5) 44.00 mm, SD = 2.894]. van Someren (1970, p. 232 – 233) gave male forewing length as 35 – 38 mm, female 39 – 42 mm.

Records

Judging by the NHM this is a rare species, at least in collections – but there is no suggestion of this in van Someren (1963). For C. lasti lasti, Kielland (1990, p. 105) noted ‘ lowland forest to 900 m. .. From the Usambaras to Pugu Hills, Morogoro and Turiani. A record from Moshi is probably this race. ’ Cordeiro (1995, p. 195) indicates that the Moshi record refers to material that he collected at Rau Goundwater Forest Reserve, where it was apparently first collected by the Rev. Baker. We failed to find Kilimanjaro area material in OUMNH, but the BMNH has single females from Moshi and New Moshi, and on this basis we include subsp. lasti in the lower slopes fauna. Beyond Tanzania lasti lasti also occurs in coastal regions of southern Kenya; there are two other subspecies, both endemic to Tanzania ( Kielland 1984, 1990, p. 105; Ackery et al. 1995, p. 449).