Alucita malawica Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016

Ustjuzhanin, Petr, Kovtunovich, Vasily & Prozorov, Alexey, 2024, Alucitidae (Lepidoptera) - a new family for the fauna of Ethiopia, Ecologica Montenegrina 71, pp. 1-4 : 4

Alucita malawica Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016

Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016a: 543 (Type locality: Nkhorongo , Malawi) .

Alucita meloui Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich, 2016b: 889 . (Type locality: Diego Suarez,

Madagascar) syn.nov.

Alucita priona Bippus, 2020: 73 . (Type locality: Réunion, La Possession) syn.nov.

Material examined. 1 ♂ ETHIOPIA, Southern Nations, Arba Minch, Dorze Lodge , 6.1796 N, 37.5799E, 2348 m, 20-23. IV. 2012, R. Beck leg.

Distribution: Malawi, Madagascar, Reunion, Ethiopia (new species for Ethiopia).

Note. We described the new species of many-plumed moth from Malawi and published in Zootaxa Journal in June 2016 ( Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich 2016a), while the species A. meloui was described and published later, in December 2016, in Entomologicheskoe obozrenie Journal ( Ustjuzhanin & Kovtunovich 2016b). Comparing the external characters of the adults and genitals of A. malawica and A. meloui , we found their complete conspecificity, and as the description of A. malawica had been published before that of A. meloui , the latter becomes a synonym of it. The other species, A. priona , described from Reunion ( Bippus 2020) as well as A. meloui is completely identical to A. malawica externally and in the genitals, so it becomes a synonym to the latter.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Robert Beck (Munich, Germany) for the materials provided for examination. We also express our gratitude to Anna Ustjuzhanina (Tomsk, Russia) for the language improvements and to Sergey Reshetnikov (Novosibirsk, Russia) for the photos of the adults.

References

Bippus, M. (2020) Records of Lepidoptera from the Malagasy region with description of new species (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae, Noctuidae, Alucitidae, Choreutidae, Euteliidae, Gelechiidae, Blastobasidae, Pterophoridae, Tonzidae, Tineidae, Praydidae, Cosmopterigidae, Batrachedridae). Phelsuma, 28, 60−100.

De Prins, J. & De Prins, W. (2011–2023) Afromoths, online database of Afrotropical moth species (Lepidoptera). Available from: http://www.afromoths.net/ (accessed December 2023)

Ustjuzhanin, P. & Kovtunovich, V. (2016 a) The Alucitidae (Lepidoptera) of Malawi with descriptions of five new species. Zootaxa, 4126 (4), 533–547. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4126.4.5

Ustjuzhanin, P. & Kovtunovich, V. (2016 b) Two New Species of the Many-Plumed Moth Genus Alucita Linnaeus (Lepidoptera, Alucitidae) from Madagascar. Entomologicheskoe Obozrenie, 95 (4), 889–891. [In Russian]

Ustjuzhanin, P., Kovtunovich, V., Ustjuzhanina, A. (2018) New species of many-plumed moths (Lepidoptera: Alucitidae) from Tanzania. Zootaxa, 4438 (1), 167–175.

https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4438.1.9