Hesperia amanda Plötz, 1883

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2023, Genomic analysis reveals new species and subspecies of butterflies, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 11 (6), pp. 1-63 : 44-45

Hesperia amanda Plötz, 1883 is a nomen dubium

Suggested as a probable variation of Hesperia ottoe W. H. Edwards, 1866 (type locality in USA: Kansas) by Godman (1907) and placed as a junior subjective synonym of Ochlodes sylvanoides napa (W. H. Edwards, 1865) (type locality in USA: Colorado, Clear Creek Co.) by Evans (1955), Hesperia amanda Plötz, 1883 (type locality not stated and unknown) was described in an identification key from at least one male with a forewing length of 13 mm (Plötz 1883). Relevant parts of the key are translated and combined here as: “Upperside reddish-yellow. Forewing with a diagonal, wide, dark brown stigma that brown longitudinal spot in cell 5. Forewing margin widely brown. Hindwing margin less wide,

especially on the inner margin, narrow and pale brown. Hindwing underside reddish-yellow with a faded yellow band”. Published on plate 180 (row i,

images 4 and 5 from the left) illustration of H.

amanda in Draudt (1921 –1924) ( Fig. 47) is,

according to our reading of Evans (1955), paler than inspected by Evans copy of Plötz’s original drawing

t[afel]. 617. Indeed, Draudt’s illustration agrees well with the original description and likely reflects the appearance of this species. In our opinion, H.

amanda is conspecific neither with H. ottoe nor with O. s. napa largely because the stigma in H. amanda extends into cell 3 (i.e., M 3 -CuA 1), forewing brown streak distad of the discal cell is confined to the cell 5 (i.e., M 1 -M 2), and the inner margin of dorsal hindwing is only narrowly brown, with a paler-brown outer margin by the tornus. These characters do not match the former two species. The stigma reaches into cell 3 in many Indo-Australian Hesperiidae , but we are not able to associate H. amanda with any species known to us. Therefore, we propose to treat this name as nomen dubium, pending further research.