Castnia strandi, (Houlbert, 1917)

Lamas, Gerardo, 2017, A review of the genus Haemonides Hübner, [1819] (Lepidoptera: Castniidae), Zootaxa 4320 (2), pp. 245-271 : 265-266

strandi ( Houlbert, 1917)

Castnia strandi Houlbert, 1917 : Études de Lépidoptérologie comparée 13: 75–76. (fig. 16).

Type material. GL believes he has found the specimen used by Strand (1913: 12, pl. 6c, fig. [1], as cronius [sic]) for his illustration of C. cronis in MNHU; it is a female, as is the illustration. Embrik Strand (1876–1947) was working in MNHU in 1913 so he must have seen this specimen in Staudinger’s collection deposited there; it is therefore highly likely that this is a syntype of strandi . It has no data other than “Coll. Sommer”.

Type locality. In Strand’s (1913: 12) entry for cronida , which follows his entry for cronis , he writes “Both occurr [sic] in Guiana ”. As he believed he was merely providing an example of cronis this cannot be taken as an indication of the type locality. Houlbert (1917) writes “sa patrie serait la Guyane, mais aucune indication précise n’a été donée sur ce point”; therefore the type locality is unknown with both authors merely stating that the taxon is found in French Guiana, although Strand may have meant Guyana.

Taxonomic status. The name is a junior primary homonym of Castnia (Gazera) strandi Niepelt, 1914 and was replaced by H. candida houlbertina Lamas, 1995 . It was originally described as a species and treated as a subspecies of cronis by Miller (1995); Lamas (1995) then treated it as a subspecies of H. candida , to which Strand’s (1913) figure bears little resemblance. However, it is here considered to be a junior subjective synonym of nominotypical H. cronis .

Distribution. Not relevant, see cronis above.

Discussion. This is a name given by Houlbert (1917) for Strand’s Castnia cronis . Strand (1913) was merely listing the known Castniidae in Seitz’s magnum opus and provided a brief description and figure for Cramer’s Papilio cronis . Houlbert (1917) decided that Strand’s illustration represented a different species from Cramer’s cronis and proposed the name strandi for the new species. Lamas (1995) then proposed the replacement name houlbertina for the homonymic strandi and moved it to the species H. candida . At the time that Houlbert was writing specimens of Haemonides were very rare in collections and it seems from his treatise that he had never seen an actual specimen of H. cronis but was only working from illustrations in past works. He could also have been confused by the fact that Cramer’s type of cronis was an artefact which included the forewings of a cronis male and Strand’s figure was a female. Much more material of all taxa has been available for this work, which shows that strandi is within the range of variation of nominotypical H. cronis .