Which Potanthus?

[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.

[Psyche]

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

[horace2264]

You can click on the hot-linked phrase "posted in BC forum" in that post containing the third specimen to get to that pic.

[Psyche]

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.


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