Mallodon downesii Hope, 1843

(Fig. 11)

Mallodon downesii Hope 1843: 366; Tavakilian and Chevillotte 2018: website (cat.).

In 2009, a male specimen of Mallodon downesii was collected in a light trap in Costa Rica: “La Ceiba Manzanillo”. The place is a private reserve near “Refugio de vida silvestre Gandoca-Manzanillo” and Puerto Viejo, in the southern Caribbean Zone of Costa Rica, province of Limón. As INBio has a very large collection of insects from Costa Rica, we sent photographs of the specimen to Angel Solís asking if he was aware of other specimens of this species from the country. He made an extensive search of the INBio collection but was not able to locate additional specimens. Since it is impossible to know how the specimen was introduced into Costa Rica, it is considered an incidental introduction.

According to Delahaye and Tavakilian (2009), Mallodon downesii occurs in: “ Afrique du Sud, Angola, Bénin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroun, République Centrafricaine, Comores, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopie, Gabon, Gambie, Guinée, Guinée-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mayotte, Mozambique, Namibie, Nigeria, Ouganda, République Populaire du Congo, République Démocratique du Congo, Rwanda, São Tomé, Sénégal, Sierra Leone, Tanzanie, Togo, Zambie, Zimbabwe.” We were not able to find a work citing this species as occurring outside of Africa.

Full bibliographic references for Mallodon downesii are available in Tavakilian and Chevillotte (2018).

Material examined. COSTA RICA, Limón: La Ceiba Manzanillo (“cebo luminoso”), 1 male, 17.IV.2009, José Esteban Durán col. (MZSP).