Chrysoritis rileyi (Dickson 1966)

Heath, Alan, 2023, Chrysoritis Butler (Papilionoidea: Lycaenidae: Aphnaeinae) - Part III: An integrative taxonomic revision, Metamorphosis 34 (1), pp. 11-28 : 23

Chrysoritis rileyi (Dickson 1966) .

Poecilmitis rileyi Dickson 1966: 241 .

Holotype: NHM, London. Type locality: Brandvlei Dam area (Worcester) ; now also known from a locality 45 km eastwards near Robertson (A. Morton pers. com.).

Host ant: Crem. peringueyi . MPT: low elevation, in flat and gently sloping terrain. It flies in sympatry with C. brooksi brooksi . Juvenile stages illustrated here in Fig. 13 . The CAD tree additionally groups a putative brooksi-rileyi hybrid with this taxon, whereas in the COI tree it groups with brooksi , thus confirming its hybrid status.

Taxonomy: This species (n = 2) groups with C. endymion (n = 1) in the COI tree (98%). In the COI tree, a sample of C. rileyi (C010) groups with the single C. endymion sample in 84% of bootstrap trees, thus C. endymion appears to render C. rileyi paraphyletic but more samples are needed to confirm this. In the COI network, C. rileyi sample C010 is closer to C. endymion than to its conspecific (only a single nucleotide change between the two taxa). However, these two taxa differ in several ways: C. endymion is a high elevation species whilst C. rileyi is at low elevations in the same geographic region. Compared to C. endymion , C. rileyi has more extensive structural colouring that also has a more greenish tinge to the blue iridescence under lateral lighting; finally, C. rileyi wing veins are more extensively blackened than in C. endymion . Further investigation is needed to confirm species status in these two taxa, given that only a single COI point mutation separates them.

Conservation status: EN (2020).

Figures

Figure 13 – C. rileyi (Brand Vlei) 4th instar (top) and final instar (bottom). Not to scale. An egg of C. rileyi is shown in Fig. 7B in HEA23.