Charaxes (Charaxes) acuminatus teitensis van Someren, 1963

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 : 886

Charaxes (Charaxes) acuminatus teitensis van Someren, 1963

Henning 1989: 48 (1 fig.). SI: Figure 20a – d (two males).

Forewing length: male 46 – 51 mm [mean (n = 8) 48.09 mm, SD = 0.951]; female 51 – 60 mm [mean (n = 4) 54.18 mm, SD = 3.585]. van Someren (1963, p. 216) gave male forewing length as 47 mm, female 55 mm.

There is almost no sexual dimorphism in colour pattern in this species, but the leaflike undersides vary considerably.

Records

Mountains of the Northern Highlands, including Oldeani, Ngorongoro, Mt Meru and Mt Longido, at elevations of 1700 – 2600 m ( Kielland 1990, p. 94). Encountered on Kilimanjaro by Liseki (2009, p. 105) at 2000 m during January and March. Four male and 1 female specimens in BMNH were collected at altitudes from 4000 – 5500 ft by Cooper. In addition there are three males from Moshi district, one collected at Rau Forest on 8 September 1943, one from ‘ 6 miles NW of Moshi ’, obtained 13 May 1916 by Buchanan, and the third from Mwika, 4000 ft, ex Adams Collection. In OUMNH there is a single male from Kilimanjaro collected by Rogers, May 1905. Beyond Tanzania this subspecies occurs in southeastern Kenya (Mt Mbolo, Taita Hills, Chyulu Hills, Ol ’ Doinyo Orok: Henning 1989; Larsen 1996). Over a dozen subspecies of C. acuminatus Thurau, 1903 , are recognized, distributed in highland forests from Kenya and Uganda to Zambia and Zimbabwe ( Ackery et al. 1995).