Charaxes (Charaxes) varanes vologeses (Mabille, 1876)

Liseki, Steven D. & Vane-Wright, Richard I., 2015, Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: Nymphalidae subfamilies Libytheinae, Danainae, Satyrinae and Charaxinae, Journal of Natural History 50, pp. 865-904 : 892

Charaxes (Charaxes) varanes vologeses (Mabille, 1876)

Henning 1989: 37,38 (4 figs). Larsen 1996: pl. 31, fig. 447 i,ii. d ’ Abrera 2004: 516 (2 figs). SI: Figure 20e – h.

Forewing length: male 36.5 – 46 mm [mean (n = 13) 41.96 mm, SD = 2.155]; female 38.5 – 49.5 mm [mean (n = 13) 45.20 mm, SD = 2.839]. van Someren (1974, p. 478) gave male forewing length as 35 – 45 mm, female 45 – 51.

Note: the underside of both sexes is dead-leaf-like, and very variable.

Records

Kielland (1990, p. 110) records C. varanes vologeses from woodlands and open areas, thickets, and occasionally forests and montane forests, up to 2300 m – apparently throughout Tanzania (mentioning the possibility of a separate subspecies on Pemba). There does not appear to be any Kilimanjaro area material of this common species in OUMNH, but the BMNH has a male collected 6 miles northwest of Moshi, a pair from Old Moshi collected by Selous, and a pair from Arusha, 4500 ft, collected by Rydon. In 1982 the late Ivan Bampton observed C. v. vologeses migrating in numbers, travelling up to 480 km through central and northern Tanzania ( Henning 1989, p. 40; repeated by Larsen 1996, p. 282). On this basis it is included here as a member of the lower slopes fauna. While not encountered by Liseki (2009), evidently this butterfly has the potential to move into the lower levels of the main forest, and should be looked for. Charaxes varanes (Cramer, 1777) , which occurs throughout almost the whole of Africa, is divided into three named subspecies: one occurs only in southern Arabia, the nominate race occurs in Botswana, Mozambique and most of South Africa, while C. v. vologeses occupies a vast range, north to Yemen ( Henning 1989, p. 36 – 40; Ackery et al. 1995, p. 460). However, the Yemeni population appears distinct, and has since been named as a further subspecies ( Turlin 1999).