Cithaerias esmeralda Penz 2021, STAT. REV.
Creators: name: Penz, Carla M.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Nymphalidae
Cithaerias
Cithaerias esmeralda

description: Cithaerias esmeralda (Doubleday), STAT. REV.
(Figs 3a–c, 7a, 9b, 10)
Haetera esmeralda Doubleday, 1845; Descriptions of new or imperfectly described diurnal Lepidoptera. Annals and Magazine of natural History 16(106): 304–308.
Type locality: Brazil, Pará.
Type material: The male holotype is deposited in The Natural History Museum, UK.
Distribution. Brazil, Pará. See map (Fig. 10) for localities of examined specimens.
Diagnosis. This species is defined based on the following combination of characters (numbered in Fig. 3a–c): (1) male HW submarginal and marginal bands amalgamated and thin; (2) male HW postmedial band proximal to the ocellus below M 1 thin, fragmented, often limited to cell Rs; (3) male HW postmedial band broad around tornus, sometimes absent from cell M 3; (4) male HW scale cover pink-violet, dense and limited to the tornus area, covering postmedial band, and enclosing medium-small pink spots; (5) female similar to male but with wider HW brown bands on wing membrane, and a continuous postmedial band including the portion outlining the ocellus below M 1; (6) dense scale cover at tornus can be of the same color and intensity as in males or paler, pink spots at tornus usually larger than in males. Male genitalia (Fig. 7a): in lateral view, uncus bent near base, longer than tegumen; in dorsal view, the uncus and short tegument form a shallowly sinuous outline. In ventral view, valva relatively thin, sinuous. Saccus broad, triangular-shaped, shorter than in bandusia. Phallus long and smoothly curved approximately at midpoint. Sub-anal plate somewhat rectangular, adjacent area mildly sclerotized with small microtrichia. Female genitalia (Fig. 9b): sterigma short and narrow (as compared to other species in this study), ostium bursae wide; post-sterigmal plate weakly sclerotized, rounded and bearing minute microtrichia. Antrum long and slightly more sclerotized than the ductus bursae; the length of the antrum plus ductus bursae seems to match the elongated male phallus. Corpus bursae lacks signa.
Variation in wing pattern (Fig. 3a–c). Few specimens were available for examination but males showed variation in HW color pattern (compare Fig. 3a and c). Specifically, the pink-violet area on the HW tornus ranges from bright pink to vivid violet. The small pink spots near the HW margin vary in size among the examined male specimens, less so in females.
Subspecies. None.
Remarks. Both male and female C. esmeralda show remarkable differences in color pattern and genitalia morphology from C. andromeda where they had been placed by Lamas 1998). These differences include: dense hind wing scaling, elongate and arched phallus, bent uncus, and a short and delicate sterigma (compare Fig. 3a–c to Fig. 2, Fig. 7a to Fig. 6, Fig. 9b to 9a). Furthermore, C. esmeralda has been collected at the same locality with C. bandusia; i.e., Brazil, Pará, Santarém based on CMNH and LACM specimens (note that Taperinha is 56 km east of Santarém). This species differs from C. bandusia by having pink-violet wing color (compare Fig. 3a–c to 3d–g) and an evenly arched phallus, rather than the sharply bent one in C. bandusia, (compare Fig. 7a to 7b). Thus, the species status for C. esmeralda proposed here is justified by wing color and genitalia characters plus putative sympatry with C. bandusia.
Material examined: MALE: 1♂, Brazil, Amazonas, Mujo (sic, locality unknown to me), 21 Dec 1940, 19-01 Dissected by CM Penz (FMNH); 1♂, Brazil, Pará (Miles Moss) 19-03 Dissected by CM Penz (FMNH); 2M, Bra- zil, Pará, Benevides, Oct 1918 (CMNH); 1M, Brazil, Pará, Santarém, Taperinha (ETHZ). FEMALE: 1♀, Brazil, Amazonas, 21 Dec 1940, 19-02 Dissected by CM Penz; (FMNH); 1♀, Brazil, Pará, km 1666 Cuiabá-Santarém Highway, 26 Jul 1978, 19-04 Dissected by CM Penz (FMNH); 2F, Brazil, Pará, Santarém (CMNH); 1F, Brazil, Pará, Santarém, Taperinha (ETHZ).
description: Published as part of Penz, Carla M., 2021, Revised species definitions and nomenclature of the blue and purple / rose Cithaerias butterflies (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae, Satyrinae), pp. 293-316 in Zootaxa 4963 (2) on pages 301-302, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4963.2.3, http://zenodo.org/record/4700886