Melitaea phoebe emipunica Verity 1919

[TL: Italy, Sicily, Palermo]: there are four male and one female specimens present in the Museo Zoologico de “La Specola” dell’Università, Firenza, Italy (cf. RUSSELL & BARTOLOZZI, 2019: Fig. 1). The male, which was figured by VERITY (1950: 152; Tav. 43: fig. 63) and given more accurate locality data: “San Martino della Scala m. 800 (Monreale Palermo); 5 V”, is here designated as the lectotype of Melitaea phoebe emipunica (Figs 12a, b). The squat triangular submarginal black markings barely touching the black intervening veins (Fig. 12b) clearly place the taxon emipunica with M. ornata . M. phoebe has not so far been proven to occur in Sicily (RUSSELL, 2018: 258). The labels on the pin (Fig. 12c) are as follows: black print on yellow paper “Monreale (San Martino)m. 800/ PALERMO ISOLA di SICILIA/ 6 Maggio 1919 Querci”; black print on white paper “Ex coll. R. Verity”; black print on pink paper “Syntypus”; printed on yellow paper “FIGURATO DA/ R. VERITY FARF. D. IT./ TAV. 43 (hand-written)/ FIG. 63 (hand-written)”; Black print on red paper “ Melitaea ornata / emipunica Verity 1919 / LECTOTYPUS/ P. RUSSELL & L. BARTOLOZZI 2019”. Both VAN OORSCHOT & COUTSIS (2014) and RUSSELL & TENNENT (2016) agreed with this determination.