Charaxes (Charaxes) protoclea azota Hewitson, 1877

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 : 891

Charaxes (Charaxes) protoclea azota Hewitson, 1877

Henning 1989: 63,64 (4 figs). Larsen 1996: pl. 31, fig. 451 i,ii. d ’ Abrera 2004: 475 (2 figs). SI: Figure 26a – d.

Forewing length: male 38.5 – 48 mm [mean (n = 11) 43.05 mm, SD = 2.081]; female 45 – 52 mm [mean (n = 11) 48.33 mm, SD = 1.940]. van Someren (1971, p. 206) gave male forewing length as 40 – 42 mm, female ‘ 42 – 48, mostly 45 – 46 ’.

Records

Forests, woodland and coastal bush, up to 1700 m, in northeastern, eastern, southern and southwestern parts of Tanzania, inland to North Pare, Nguru and Ukaguru Mountains ( Kielland 1990, p. 108). There is no Kilimanjaro area material in OUMNH, but the BMNH has a pair from Engare Sero, Arusha National Park, collected by A.H.B. Rydon. Cordeiro (1995, p. 195), however, records azota from the southern foothills of Kilimanjaro, notably near rivers such as the Karanga, abundantly at Rau Groundwater Forest Reserve, and frequently in the Kahe Forest. Not encountered by Liseki (2009), C. p. azota is included here as a member of the lower slopes fauna. Beyond Tanzania the subspecies occurs in Kenya (coast and Shimba Hills), south to parts of Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique and South Africa. Charaxes protoclea Feisthamel includes six named subspecies, ranging collectively through lowland forests from Senegal to northern Angola, east to Uganda and Kenya and south to South Africa.