Colotis auxo dissociatus ( Butler, 1897 )

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2014, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: family Pieridae, subfamily Pierinae, Journal of Natural History 48 (25 - 26), pp. 1543-1583 : 1546-1548

Colotis auxo dissociatus ( Butler, 1897)

d’ Abrera 1997: 81 (4 figs). SI: Figure 3a–h.

Forewing length: male 18.0– 22.5 mm (mean (n = 6) 20.73 mm, SD = 1.313); female 16.5–22.0 mm (mean (n = 6) 19.8 mm, SD = 1.413).

Records. Kielland (1990, p.56, as C. aurora dissociatus ) states that this butterfly occurs in savannah and dry woodland from 200 to 1700 m in many parts of Tanzania, but not in wet coastal areas or high mountains. However, the three specimens illustrated by Kielland (1990, p.267) as “ aurora dissociatus ” ( Table 2) appear to us to represent C. evarne . If Kielland did confuse auxo and evarne as a single species then we cannot be sure where within Tanzania he found them, nor can we be sure how his description of general ecology applies. As C. evarne is generally considered not to extend south from Kenya and Uganda into Tanzania (although it does according to Bernardi 1989: map 4), it may well be that his choice of specimens for illustration was unfortunate, perhaps coming from northwestern Tanzania, whereas his description perhaps largely pertains to C. auxo dissociatus . Butler’ s type series of dissociatus included specimens from Kilimanjaro. Although Tanzania was not included within the range of dissociatus by Bernardi (1989: map 4), this taxon is listed here as a member of the lower slopes fauna on the evidence of several specimens from Kilimanjaro and Taveta in the BMNH, and about 10 specimens from Taveta in OUMNH. Aurivillius (1910a, p.12) noted a pair as Teracolus auxo from Kilimanjaro. Journal of Natural History More widely, the subspecies occurs in Malawi and Zambia south to Botswana and northern Mozambique ( Ackery et al. 1995, p.188), while the nominate subspecies of auxo occurs in South Africa. However, the boundary between the two requires further investigation: it is difficult to reconcile the accounts of Bernardi (1989) and d’ Abrera (1997), in which auxo and dissociatus are treated as separate species, with the current division into two “ecological” subspecies (see also comments in Pennington 1978, p.168).

Females of C. auxo dissociatus are essentially dimorphic for white or orange forewing tip. Some have a faintly yellowish ground, and some have a wider forewing apical black border than others.