Dyscophellus porcius subsp. porcius
Creators: name: Austin, George T.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2008
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Hesperiidae
Dyscophellus
Dyscophellus porcius
Dyscophellus porcius porcius

description: Dyscophellus porcius porcius (C. and R. Felder, 1862)   
(Fig. 56-57, 59-60, 98, 105, 127)  
 Dyscophellus porcius from Rondônia (male mean FW length = 26.7 mm [24.9-28.0, n = 10]) seem typical (e.g., see Cock and Alston-Smith 1990). The dorsal color varies in the brightness of the red-brown and in the definition of the darker brown margins, the latter a function of the intensity of red-brown overscaling. There is slight variation in the size of the discal cell macules on both the forewing and hindwing and considerable variation in the size and definition of and the amount of white within the macules on the ventral hindwing.   
 Male genitalia (Fig. 98) of Rondonian material are like those illustrated by Godman and Salvin (1879 - 1901) as Dyscophellus doriscus (Hewitson, 1867) and Hayward (1948), but do not show the recurved harpe as illustrated by Evans (1952). The genitalia of a single female of what is possibly D. porcius (from Costa Rica, but see Miller et al. 2006) were examined (Fig. 105). The lamella postvaginalis slopes laterad from a shallow V-shaped central indentation, the lamella antevaginalis has two large lateral plates without serrations or spines and a short central portion having a pair of short lateral lobes extending caudad, and a broad sclerotized antrum followed by a membranous tube joining the side of the broadly oval ductus bursae cephalad of its caudal end, this constricting slightly cephalad before an oblong corpus bursae. The caudal end of the ductus bursae has a weakly sclerotized plate with its posterio-lateral corners as heavily sclerotized points.   
 Two additional phenotypes of female Dyscophellus were examined from Costa Rica that could not be placed with certainty into this species. One (FW length = 31.1 mm), which may be Dyscophellus sebaldus (Stoll, 1781), superficially resembles the female of D. porcius (Fig. 33, 36), but the forewing is more produced, the large forewing macules are different in size and shape, and, on the ventral hindwing, the submarginal macules are margined distad by dark macules with scattered white scales. This female has the lamella postvaginalis produced into two caudal lobes separated by a U-shaped central notch (Fig. 106). The lateral plates of the lamella antevaginalis are narrow with a weakly serrated caudal edge and the central portion is short and quadrate. The sclerotized antrum is short.   
 The other phenotype (FW length = 30.2 mm), possibly D. diaphorus, is red-brown, becoming gradually browner towards the margins (Fig. 38-39). The macules are small, nearly as small as on D. ramon. The lamella postvaginalis of this female (Fig. 110) has a nearly quadrate caudal edge with a narrow Ushaped central notch; a lamella antevaginalis with the broad lateral plates having a serrated caudal edge and a central portion that is long, rectangular, and slightly notched on its caudal edge; and a short membranous tube caudad of the sclerotized antrum with a rectangular sclerotized plate at its junction with the ductus bursae just cephalad of its caudal end. The ductus bursae is bulbous caudad, but narrows to a long tube before the globular corpus bursae. This is the only species of Dyscophellus on which this long tubular portion of the ductus bursae has been seen.   
 Dyscophellus porcius is uncommon in central Rondônia, with records scattered through the year (Fig. 127). This species is wide ranging from southern Mexico to Paraguay and southern Brazil (Hoffmann 1941, Evans 1952, Cock and Alston-Smith 1990, Brown 1992, de la Maza and Gutiérrez 1992, Mielke and Casagrande 1997, Warren 2000, Luis et al. 2004).
description: Published as part of Austin, George T., 2008, Hesperiidae of Rondônia, Brazil: Taxonomic comments on " night " skippers, with descriptions of new genera and species (Lepidoptera: Eudaminae), pp. 1-36 in Insecta Mundi 2008 (29) on page 19, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4532815