Deloneura immaculata
| Deloneura immaculata | ||||||||||||
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| Deloneura immaculata | ||||||||||||
| Trimen , 1868 |
Deloneura immaculata is a presumably extinct butterfly species from the family of the blues (Lycaenidae), known only from three femalescollectedin Transkei , South Africa in 1863. It is considered a type of the genus Deloneura .
features
The three specimens have a wing span of 18 to 23 mm. They are pure yellow butterflies with rounded wings. The top is yellow ocher without any markings. The costal field and the rear border area on the underside of the hind wings are light and unclear. The coloring of the males is unknown.
Habitat and Ecology
The species was discovered in a wooded area along the banks of the Mbhashe River . James Henry Bowker called them a real forest insect that only occurs within forests or at the forest edges. The flight was similar to that of the species Acraea horta and that of a butterfly of the genus Aroa , locally known as the "yellow tree moth". Bowker described the flight as follows: "They spin slowly around the tops of the trees with flapping wings, rise and fall, sail away and return again."
Discovery history and status
The type specimen was collected on December 27, 1863 on the Mbhashe River near Fort Bowker by James Henry Bowker. Bowker caught two more specimens before January 1, 1864. In the following period he stayed in the region for a few months, but could no longer detect any specimen. Presumably, habitat changes in the area around Fort Bowkers contributed to the species' disappearance. Two specimens are in the South African Museum in Cape Town , the third in the Natural History Museum in London .
Individual evidence
- ^ Roland Trimen: Observations on some South-African Butterflies enumerated in the "Catalog of Diurnal Lepidoptera" of the Family Satyridae in the Collection of the British Museum In: The Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London , 1868: p. 283-288.
literature
- Stephen F. Henning & Graham A. Henning: South African Red Data Book Butterflies A report of the Committee for Nature Conservation Research, National Program for Ecosystem Research. South African national scientific programs report; No. 158, 1989: pp. 47-48 ISBN 0-7988-4511-2
- GA Henning, RF Terblanche & JB Ball (Eds.): South African Red Data Book: Butterflies . SANBI Biodiversity Series 13, South African National Biodiversity Institute , Pretoria, 2009: p. 28-29 ISBN 978-1-919976-51-8 .
- Roland Trimen & James Henry Bowker: South-African Butterflies: A Monograph of the Extra-Tropical Species Volume 2: Erycinidae and Lycaenidae. , 1887 (reprinted by BiblioBazaar, 2009): p. 226 ISBN 978-1-115-12153-8
Web links
- Deloneura immaculata inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: World Conservation Monitoring Center, 1996. Retrieved December 14, 2013.