Quote Originally Posted by Commander View Post
I've been looking at many of the specimens collected over the past 20 years from Singapore, and have yet to find two species that were present in the checklists of the early authors - E. lacteola and E. ada.

Two come close to E. lacteola but when I had a comparison of the upperside, which also has some ID features in C&P4's key, they turned out to be more likely E. hecabe than E. lacteola.

As Seow said, then there are aberrants where the cell spots are obscured, or missing (our earlier debates about the regular appearances of "no-spot grass yellows" refer)

Hence unless we have a shot of a pristine specimen and a voucher one that can validate the physical characteristics, I would hesitate to nail down an ID with full confidence. With these Eurema, there seems to be a wide variation of spots and markings.

Teo TP, on the other hand, may have more conclusive evidence of the presence of E. lacteola with more specimens from the Singapore front to compare. Perhaps he can chip in on this discussion when he returns from his trip to Malaysia.
There are Terias lacteola* from Singapore. I did a comparison of text and keys in both C&P 4 and Prof. Osamu Yata's book (Butterflies of the SEA Islands volume 2). C&P 4 gave information and separation keys on 9 Sin-Malaysian Eurema species and Yata described 16 SEA species with photos, figured the wing patterns for discrimination of the 16 species, a set of separation keys for the Eurema groups, distribution maps and genitalia of every species, detail comments on distribution, seasonal forms, variations of hecabe and lacteola. Both books stated that the examination of valves is the most reliable method to differentiate the two species.

The original description of E. lacteola lacteola by Distant in 1886 was from Singapore (Yata et al, 1985). Although C&P 4 (page 398) gave a [S] for lacteola but I did encountered this species on many occasions locally. I was surprised that no photo of this species from BC member. Like the common Ypthimus species, is it because it looks like hecabe, so common that nobody wants to take a close look on it?

Teo T P

*Please refer to "Updating the Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula" page 7 by J. N. Eliot (MNJ vol. 59, no. 1: 1-49, 2006).