Which Potanthus?

[horace2264]

The veins of this Potanthus specimen on the underside are not darkened or at most lightly darkened. There seems to be just two sub-apical spots on the forewing. I suppose P. omaha can be ruled out.

Dr Seow, any idea on its species ID?

[Psyche]

It is definitely Potanthus juno.

The 3rd spot in space 8 is either reduced or totally missing.
This is more obvious on the upperside, but in this case it is a cetainty that on the upperside there will be only two spots.
This one have the veins lightly darkened & close to P. omaha, but still less dark.

TL Seow

[horace2264]

Many thanks, Dr Seow for the ID.
We should be able to confirm the ID with the upperside in due course.

[horace2264]

Adding two zoomed-in pics of the same Potanthus specimens to show the degree of "darkenness" of the veins crossing the yellowish orange markings on both fore- and hindwings.

[Psyche]

This shows clearly that the veins are just very lightly darkened. In P. omaha they are strongly darkened, including the veins on the forewing as well.
Obviously a few Darts in the past have been mis-ID'd as omaha because of noticeable darkened veins.

L Seow

[Commander]

Thanks for the voucher specimen for confirmation, Horace. Interestingly, I have two other specimens with that missing subapical spot from two other locations - Upper Seletar Reservoir Park on 11 Jul 2010 and Mt Faber Park on 17 Aug 2010.

Can you check the specimen shots that you bred from Mt Faber?

[horace2264]

Can you check the specimen shots that you bred from Mt Faber?

The one I bred from MF in 2010 turned out to be P. trachala which has the third subapical spot. You have the voucher specimen in your collection.

[horace2264]

I scanned through my archive of Potanthus pics and found two other similarly looking Potanthus with very small subapical spot in space 8 of the forewing.

The first one was taken on 29 Nov 2010 in WWW.

Potanthus_29_Nov_2010_01.jpg

The second one was a specimen I bred (partial record) in 2007 and posted in the BC forum. The adult underside shot given in that post also showed a much reduced subapical spot in space 8 of the forewing. As a matter of fact, in that pic the adult was positioned to hide a birth defect in the other wing. Below is a shot I took of the upperside of this other wing when the butt was resting on the window.

Potanthus_Deformed_Adult_18_July_2007_01.jpg

[Psyche]

No doubts about it.
They are all P. juno, and probably not so rare after all.

TL Seow

[horace2264]

No doubts about it.
They are all P. juno, and probably not so rare after all.

TL Seow

Thanks for the confirmation, Dr Seow.

The species seems to have a wide distribution, based on the sighting records. We should all dig into our archive of UFO skippers and look for this particular species.