Zographeus satwa (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae): a first record from Hong Kong
On the 28th of October 1998, a field meeting held by the Hong Kong Lepidoptera Group visited Cheung Sheung in order to monitor the population of Aeromachus pymaea (Fabricius) (Lep: Hesperiidae; Hesperiinae). The group started out at Yueng Shue O at around 10 a.m. and were walking out of the village towards Jacob's Ladder, when, just 50 or so metres from the start of the path, a small skipper butterfly was noticed flying around a small clearing the path passed through. Out of curiosity, it was netted and put into a container for closer inspection. This revealed the skipper resting in the typical Hesperiinae "V" wing posture, making it difficult to see the dorsal wing surface. The ventral surface of the hindwing had a bold ventral colour pattern that I did not recognise; namely a milk-chocolate brown with the costal third of the wing straw coloured. The specimen was passed to James Young for his opinion as to its identity; he said only that it was new to Hong Kong as he did not recognise it either. The butterfly was thus retained for further investigation and now resides in the Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden's butterfly collection. The following day James Young (pers. comm.) forwarded a message to say that he had identified the butterfly from Chou (1994) as a male Zographetus satwa (de Nicéville, 1884) (Hesperiidae; Hesperiinae) and that it was indeed the first time this species had been recorded in Hong Kong. Bascombe (1995) gives the distribution as "Nepal, NE India, Burma, Thailand and Hainan, south through Malay peninsula to Sumatra and Java". This record this extends the known range of Zographetus satwa some 500km eastwards.
My thanks to James Young for agreeing to identify and set the specimen.
Roger Kendrick
References
Bascombe, M.J., 1995. Check list of the butterflies of South China. Memoirs of the Hong Kong Natural History Society 20: 1-205.
Chou, I. (Chief Ed.), 1994. Monographia Rhopalocerorum Sinensium. Henan Science and Technology Press, Zhengzhou, Henan.
P.5
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