Poritiinae of Sukadi, Bas-Uele

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Cabintom
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Poritiinae of Sukadi, Bas-Uele

Post by Cabintom »

Back in November, 2022, I traveled to Sukadi, Bas-Uele (also known as Assa or Asa), the site of a small mission station and hospital, to help run a church conference. During that time, I managed to carve out a few hours, on a couple of occasions, to head down the hill and do some collecting. In this post I'll highlight the Poritiinae species I collected in a ~25m2 patch of disturbed forest.

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In this image you can see the old missionary house (silver roof) and hospital in the upper left. The area surrounding the mission station is a patchwork of cultivated fields (not seen in this old image, which I believe was taken during the LRA's invasion of the area), savanna & forest. The blue square indicates the spot where these butterflies were collected, just off the main trail.

Poritiinae have an interesting habit of sitting/resting at the tips of tendrils, shoots, and twigs, almost like little flowers or buds. They are closely associated with certain species of ants. Often you'll find several individuals, even in mixed species groups, sitting on the same tendril. When walking along Central African forest trails, one soon develops the instinct to scan probable tendrils & twigs for these Lycaenids.

Larinopoda tera
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Mimeresia moreelsi purpurea
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Mimeresia drucei ugandae
Males
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Female
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Mimeresia cf. cellularis/pseudocellularis
I'm not certain which this is. The figures in Papillons du Gabon suggest cellularis , but the MRAC collection points to pseudocellularis. Either way this seems to be a significant range extension.
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Pentila umangiana
As best as I can tell, these forms match 2 or 3 currently accepted subspecies of umangiana.
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Pentila pauli multiplagata
Unlike the others here, this species isn't tied to ants and is much more tolerant of different environments. I'm cheating by including this specimen as it wasn't caught within the area of the blue box above, but rather just a few 10s of meters to the west, on the edge of a cultivated field.
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Pentila cf. cloetensi
My hunch is that these represent an undescribed species.
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Pentila tachyroides isiro
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Ptelina carnuta
These are tiny little things.
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Mimacraea landbecki
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Citrinophila erastus erastus
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For scale: the label borders are 2cm X 1cm.
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