Castnia lutea, (Houlbert, 1917)

Lamas, Gerardo, 2017, A review of the genus Haemonides Hübner, [1819] (Lepidoptera: Castniidae), Zootaxa 4320 (2), pp. 245-271 : 263

lutea ( Houlbert, 1917)

Castnia lutea Houlbert, 1917 : Études de Lépidoptérologie comparée 13: 75–76. (fig. 15).

Type material. Buchecker ([1880]: pl. 2, fig. 3) illustrated a female specimen with the legend " Herrichia cronis Cram. " In all probability, Buchecker's illustration was based on a unique female, which is therefore the holotype by monotypy of Castnia lutea Houlbert. The whereabouts of that specimen, if still extant, are unknown.

Type locality. Given by Buchecker ([1880]) as “ Surinam ”.

Taxonomic status. The name is here considered to be a junior subjective synonym of nominotypical H. cronis ( Cramer, 1775) . Houlbert (1917) considered it to be a species; Miller (1995) listed it as a synonym of emiliae , to which Buchecker’s figure bears little resemblance. It was synonymised with H. cronis by Lamas (1995).

Distribution. Not relevant, see cronis above.

Discussion. This is a name given by Houlbert (1917) for Buchecker’s ([1880]) Herrichia cronis . Buchecker ([1880]) merely provided a figure for Cramer’s Papilio cronis and included it in his newly established genus Herrichia , an invalid junior homonym. Houlbert (1917) decided that Buchecker’s illustration represented a different species from Cramer’s cronis and proposed the name lutea for the new species. At the time that Houlbert was writing, specimens of the genus Haemonides were very rare in collections and it seems from his paper that he had never seen an actual specimen of H. cronis but was only working from illustrations in past works. Substantially more material of all taxa has been available for this work, which shows that lutea is within the range of variation of nominotypical cronis .