Ydeali, Bouyer, 2023

Bouyer, Thierry, 2023, The genera of the tribe Charaxini (Papilionoidea, Nymphalidae, Charaxinae), Metamorphosis 34 (1), pp. 59-78 : 64-65

Genus Ydeali gen. nov.

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:74F27831-5FFB-40C7-AEF9-B434436747C1

Type species of the genus: Charaxes lydiae Holland , 1917.

Derivatio nominis. Ydeali is the anagram of the specific name lydiae , the type species of the new genus, also suggesting the word “ideal”.

Monospecific genus corresponding to Charaxes lydiae , a very characteristic white, black and orange tricolour species, mimetic of the partially diurnal genus of Lymantriinae Otroeda Walker, 1854 and the female of Cymothoe beckeri (Herrich-Schäffer, 1858) , in whose company it flies. Note also the great chromatic similarity between the underside of lydiae and Charaxes superbus , two very localized and sympatric Charaxini .

Y. lydiae was attached to the “ nobilis -group” by Henning (1989: 208) although Plantrou (1983: 178-179, 257) distinguished it by its very particular genital armature. It was not included in Aduse-Poku et al. (2009). Lévêque & Pierre (2017) demonstrated that this species is quite special, probably related to the Euxanthe .

The barcode (public data, see Fig. 20 ) shows that lydiae forms a distinctly individualized cluster which is close to a cluster containing Viridixes (and incidentally Euxanthe ).

The hindwing is basically white with a large orange patch in the tornus and a black marginal band composed of black interveinal discs. Each of these discs is adorned with a central white spot, limited proximally by a more or less present bluish line, itself limited by a black border, and bordered on the outside by a white internervural bar pinched in its centre (like a long bone, arranged along the outer edge of the wing).

The genus contains only one species, Ydeali lydiae ( Holland, 1917) comb. nov.

Figures

Figure 20 – Neighbour-joining tree generated by Mega 11, using Kimura 2-parameter model using public and verified samples extracted from BOLD system (https://www.boldsystems.org/). Sequence analysed is the 658Bp mitochondrial gene COI.