Amerila syntomina (Butler, 1787)

Przybyłowicz, Łukasz, Maicher, Vincent, László, Gyula M., Sáfián, Szabolcs & Tropek, Robert, 2019, Amerila (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae) of Cameroon with morphological remarks on male and female genitalia, Zootaxa 4674 (2), pp. 283-295 : 292

Amerila syntomina (Butler, 1787) (Figs 15, 22-24)

Material (1 specimen). 1 ♂ Mount Cameroon (SW slope), 17.iv.2015, Bamboo camp (350 m a.s.l.), N 4.0879°, E 9.0505°, lgt. V. Maicher, Sz. Sáfián, Š. Janeček, R. Tropek (attracted by light) .

Male genitalia (Figs 22–24)

Tegumen (Fig. 23) narrow, pedunculus broadened, directed posteriorly; uncus very small, triangular, pointed apical- ly, not longer than the dorsal part of tegumen; vinculum long, slender; saccus reduced; valva (Fig. 22) large, ovoid, its outer surface with the long, protrudable, tube-like coremata, its inner surface with a horn-like sclerotized process slightly curved and apically pointed, not reaching the outer margin of valva; phallus (Fig. 24) straight, weakly sclerotized; vesica shorter than the phallus with four large, elongate, basally not fused, sharply pointed cornuti in the basal zone and additionally a single, similarly long but apically rounded cornutus in its terminal section.

Distribution

The species is known from the Afrotropical forests from Guinea through the Congo-Guinean basin to Tanzania, but the real distribution is still dubious due to the mistake by Häuser & Boppré (1997) discussed below. Mount Camer- oon is the only known locality in Cameroon, we collected a single specimen at 350 m a.s.l. ( Fig. 1 ).

Remarks

Previously, A. syntomina was reported from Cameroon only by Gaede (1926), without any locality or other specific data.

The illustrations of male genitalia provided by Häuser & Boppré (1997: plate 13) are incorrect. Examination of the types of both A. syntomina and A. syntomina rubondoi by the third author (GyML) revealed that these taxa represent two distinct species. Häuser & Boppré did not examine the type of A. syntomina and they mistakenly assumed that ssp. rubondoi has identical male genitalia to the nominotypical subspecies. Consequently, the illustrated genitalia did not belong to A. syntomina , but to rubondoi. We illustrate the male genitalia of A. syntomina for the first time (Figs. 22 and 23), they are identical to that of this taxon lectotype (housed at the NHMUK). As the com- plete taxonomic revision of the A. syntomina species group exceeds the scope of this paper, the revision clarifying taxonomy of the species group will be prepared as a separate publication in the near future.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Elevational distribution of Amerila species on Mount Cameroon. The three elevational zones, with their transitions, are visualized by different colors. The weighted mean elevation of individual species (black dot), together with their lowest and highest records, are visualized. After species names, numbers of collected specimens are stated.