Erionota acroleuca

Xue, Guo-Xi & Lo, Yik Fui Philip, 2015, A taxonomic note on Erionota acroleuca (Wood-Mason & de Nicéville, 1881) stat. rest. (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae), Zootaxa 3926 (3), pp. 445-447 : 445

Erionota acroleuca (Wood-Mason & de Nicéville, 1881), stat. rest.

Telegonus acroleucus Wood-Mason & de Nicéville, 1881(Aug.): 143 (original description).

Hesperia hiraca Moore, 1881 (Sept.) : 313 (original description).

Hesperia acroleuca: Wood-Mason & de Nicéville (1881 Dec.: 260) (synonyms, description).

Teligonus lara Swinhoe, 1890: 365 (original description).

Erionota acroleuca: Watson (1891: 107) (name list); Evans (1941: 159) (description, synonyms, subspecies); Evans (1949: 327) (description, synonyms, subspecies).

Erionota thrax acroleuca: Evans (1927: 440) (description, distribution, synonyms); Evans (1932: 373) (description, distribution, synonyms); Khatri (1993: 184) (name list).

Erionota hiraca : de Jong & Treadaway (1992: 134) (description); de Jong & Treadaway (2007: 47) (nomenclature, distribution, variation); Ek-Amnuay et al. (2007: 16) (nomenclature); de Jong & Treadaway (2008: 10) (distribution); Mohanraj & Veenakumari (2011: 6) (checklist, distribution).

Remarks. The date of publication printed on the paper which originally described acroleuca is “August, 1881” (Wood- Mason & de Nicéville 1881 Aug.). While Bridges (1988) recorded the publication date of this name as October, 1881, and that of hiraca as September, 1881. According to this record, de Jong & Treadaway (1992) shifted the priority from acroleuca to hiraca , this treatment continued in their subsequent works (de Jong & Treadaway 2007, 2008), and was also followed by others (e.g. Devyatkin & Monastyrskii 1999; Kitamura 2003; Ek-Amnuay et al. 2007; Mohanraj & Veenakumari 2011). But: 1) in a paper issued on 21 December, 1881, Wood-Mason & de Nicéville described acroleucus again in a more detailed way under the name “ Hesperia acroleuca ”, they even gave a one-month priority of their name acroleucus (August) over Moore’s hiraca (September) . 2) the “letter code” assigned to acroleucus in Bridges (1988, 1994) is “a”, meaning “available valid species name”, and that to hiraca is “c” meaning “synonym”; the name hiraca is clearly recorded as “SS: acroleucus (Wood-Mason & de Nicéville), 1881” with a note “Close, September versus August”, indicating that hiraca is a junior synonym of acroleucus because of one month behind in publication. 3) The library of the Natural History Museum in London confirmed that the original paper of acroleucus was published in August 1881. Thus, according to Chapter 5 (Articles 21 and 22) of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (Fourth Edition), the date of publication of the original paper introducing acroleuca should be accepted as [31 August] 1881. The nomenclatural act by de Jong & Treadaway (1992), which has caused a misapplication of hiraca and threatened the stability of acroleuca , should be corrected. Therefore, we restore acroleuca to a valid name, and submerge hiraca herein.