Questions - Bornean species

[Glorious Begum]

I have a couple of questions about Bornean species

1) Are these 2 the same Mycalesis amoena & Mycalesis kina ? If yes, which ID is to be used ?

2) In Otsuka endemic list. Below few are not found in Funet site. Is anyone can confirm it is valid ?
Arhopala apurpurosa
Arhopala brillantina
Britomartis bravurus
Drupadia parva
Tajuria prenoxa
Caltoris kinabaluna
Koruthaialos frena
Potanthus ayakoae
Telicota santa

Gracias !

[atronox]

1) kina is a synonym of amoena. From D'abrera(1985), "The taxon kina is only a localised form of amoena". He illustrates two specimens which show the variability in the intensity of the brown bands crossing the wings. One of these extremes is probably Staudinger's kina

2) I think all of these are illustrated in Butterflies of Borneo by Seki, Takanami and Otsuka. For the lycaenids, based on the plates, they all seem to be valid and distinct from existing spp. based on their descriptions. The names are not on Funet but most of them can be found on Wikispecies. A. apurpurosa appears on Funet as a ssp. of ammonides, but it has been reinstated to species level by Seki. Most of the time "validity" of a taxon just depends on whether there is a general consensus amongst the scientific community and one is free to either follow or disagree. There is no way of knowing what a valid species is for sure because the species concept(what constitutes a "species") is subjective. The most "objective" and measurable way is through nucleotide sequencing but even that has some degree of subjectivity.

Wikispecies is far more reliable than Funet. Funet is quite slow to update their database. I find that many Neotropical spp. described within the last few years have not been added to the Funet lists even till now but they do appear in Wikispecies(mostly). For that i would stick to using Wikispecies

[Glorious Begum]

Thank you Aaron.