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? :)
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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? :)
It is definitely Potanthus juno.:jumjoy: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
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:cheers:
Many thanks, Dr Seow for the ID. :) :gbounce:
We should be able to confirm the ID with the upperside in due course. ;-)
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.
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:cheers:
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? :thinking:
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Commander
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.
Attachment 17571
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.
Attachment 17572
No doubts about it.
They are all P. juno, and probably not so rare after all.
TL Seow:cheers:
Thanks for the confirmation, Dr Seow. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Psyche
The species seems to have a wide distribution, based on the sighting records. :thinking: We should all dig into our archive of UFO skippers and look for this particular species.
Horace, do you have an underside shot of the third deformed specimen ?
After looking at Brian's Potanthus I realised I may be over enthusiastic with the ID since it is necessary to bear in mind possible variations.
TL Seow:cheers:
You can click on the hot-linked phrase "posted in BC forum" in that post containing the third specimen to get to that pic. :)
Thanks Horace. The underside is that of P. juno..
Apart from the hardly darkened veins, the underside hindwing also have the blackish shading not seen in omaha.
http://www.butterflycircle.com/check...wbutterfly/272
TL Seow:cheers:
Thanks, Dr Seow for the ID confirmation. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Psyche
I actually saw the underside already & based my ID on that but have forgoten after scrutinising Brian's pic.
TL Seow:cheers:
One of the difficulty with skippers is that individual variations make it very difficult to ID.
The Large Dart in the key is ID'ed by its size first, almost 2x the smaller ones.
P. serina always have the FW spot 5 smaller than spot 4.
The female is also known to lose its spot 8 occassinally, ie it has only 2 subapical spots.
These 2 characters are also seen in P. juno, especially the female also tend to have spot 5 < spot 4, potentially a disasterous situation.
Happily, P. serina has the cilia plain, & not checquered like the smaller Potanthus.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rzo8wjfyCs...S_adult_01.jpg
Skipper 1 should be female P. juno provided P. omaha do not have a 2-spotter. Have'nt seen one yet.
Skipper 2 is correctly a male P. juno ; spot 4& 5 equal; narrow spot 1b.
Skipper 3 (deformed) looks correct to be a female P. juno ; note spot 5 smaller than spot 4; size will help.
TL Seow:cheers: