The clavatus species group

This group was defined by Baker (1925: 348) with the following set of characters: (1) medium sized species; (2) cephalic process short, very stout, strongly clavate, black or olive green above and with red or ochraceous apex; (3) tegmina largely black.

It seems worth mentioning that Baker did not examine any specimen of P. atroalbus comb. nov. or P. watanabei .

Lallemand (1963: 88) restricted the definition to characters of the cephalic process only: “ cephalic process rather short, much shorter than body, gradually narrowing, strongly dilated apically into a quite large ball” (translated from French).

Nagai & Porion (1996) followed Lallemand’s (1963) definition.

After examination of the types of all species placed in the group by previous authors, the combination of the following characters is given to define the group: (1) medium sized species; (2) cephalic process rather short, progressively narrowing towards apex and strongly swollen apically; (3) apical third of hind wings black or white.

The Philippine species P. polillensis is removed from the group based on the broad black area of the hind wing extending all along the sutural margin (see illustrations in Baker 1925), in contradiction with character (3), and not attributed to any of the currently defined species groups of Pyrops .

The three species included here in the group are distributed in a zoogeographically consistent zone extending from northern India eastwards to Taiwan through Bangladesh, Myanmar, northern Thailand, Laos and southern China, and southwards to central Vietnam.

Identification key to the species of the Pyrops clavatus group

1. Abdomen black ventrally (Fig. 1B); tegmina pale yellow-white on disc and with 3 black spots in costal area before nodal line (Fig. 1A); cephalic process yellow (Fig. 1 D–F) (known from Laos, Thailand and Vietnam) ………………………………………… Pyrops atroalbus (Distant, 1918) comb. nov.

– Abdomen red ventrally (Fig. 2B) …………………………………………………………………2

2. Tegmina largely black on disc (Fig. 2A), or in the pale forms (Fig. 3A, D), bluish white on disc and without black spots in costal area; cephalic process red-brown to black (Figs 2 D–G, 3C, E) (known from N India, Bangladesh, N Myanmar, N Thailand, S China and N Vietnam) ……… ………………………………………………………………… Pyrops clavatus (Westwood, 1839)

– Tegmina mainly white on disc and with 3 black spots in costal area before nodal line (Fig. 4A, F); cephalic process yellow (Fig. 4 D–E) (known from Taiwan) … Pyrops watanabei (Matsumura, 1913)