Parnara Moore, 1881

Cock, Matthew J. W. & Congdon, Colin E., 2012, Observations on the biology of Afrotropical Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera) principally from Kenya. Part 4. Hesperiinae: Aeromachini and Baorini, Zootaxa 3438, pp. 1-42 : 30-31

Parnara Moore, 1881 (in Moore 1880 –1881)

Moore (1880 -1881) established this genus for P. guttatus (Bremer & Gray) , a well known minor pest of rice in Asia (e.g., Grist & Lever 1969), for which the life history is well documented (e.g., Bascombe et al. 1999). The genus was reviewed by Chiba & Eliot (1991) mainly based on the male genitalia, and they consider that there are nine species, of which two are African: P. monasi (Trimen) from mainland Africa, and nominate P. naso (Fabricius) from Mauritius and the Seychelles, with ssp. bigutta Evans 1937 from La Réunion and ssp. poutieri Boisduval from Madagascar (which T.B. Larsen (pers. comm. 2011) suggests is likely to be a valid species).

Williams (1989) records that P. naso naso feeds on sugar cane and other Poaceae in Mauritius, although Davis & Barnes (1993) give only sugar cane, while Guillermet (2011) gives only Nastus borbonica (Poaceae) . Parnara naso poutieri is a minor pest of rice in Madagascar ( Frappa 1937, Bouriquet 1949). We review the available information on the life history of P. monasi in order to compare it with other African Baorini .