Dark Webbed Ringlet Physcaeneura panda (de Boisduval 1847)
Family Nymphalidae Subfamily Satyrinae Tribe Satyrini
Marloth Park by Richprins
Endemism: Southern Africa.
Physcaeneura (Webbed Ringlets) is an Afrotropical genus containing five species.
Description
The wingspan is 34–38 mm for males and 35–39 mm for females.
Distribution
Found in South Africa, common and widespread in the hot dry savanna of Mozambique (south), Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia (north), South Africa (Limpopo Province, Mpumalanga, North West Province, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal), Swaziland
Adults are seasonally dormant, and are on wing from September to May (with a peak in late summer)
Habitat
Terrestrial, savanna bushveld. The flight is weak, low down, and it often settles on low vegetation or on the ground. Specimens tend to keep to the shade cast by large trees. Both sexes feed from flowers and are also attracted to fermenting fruit
Biology
Early Stages (Clark, in Van Son, 1955: 93.)
Egg. The eggs are laid singly on a blade of grass. They are elliptical in section, being 1.1 mm in the major diameter halfway down, and 0.95 mm in the minor diameter, and are 1.3 mm high. There are 19-20 longitudinal ribs braced by 14-16 troughs which increase in size towards the top and turn into round indentations. Micropyle slightly irregular and sunken. Watery yellow when laid, they darken slightly and develop brick-red to red maculae. Egg-stage eleven days.
Larva: First instar. The young larva eats its way out near the top and devours the discarded shell. It is 3 mm long, whitish-yellow with a brownish-yellow head. The setae of the head are black with light tips, those of the body are watery white. There is a pale brown dorsal line and a lateral line of the same colour, but the subdorsal line is restricted to light brown dashes on the first two wrinkles of each segment. Below, the lateral line is touched with pale brown. The larva takes short feeds from the edge of a blade of grass and grows to 63⁄4 mm in about twelve days. Towards the end of the first instar, the larva has a broad dull green dorsal line split down the centre and edged by very thin brown, followed by a bluish-white line about half the breadth of the dorsal line. This is followed by a dull green line edged above and below with thin brown. This line envelops the first two rows of moles bearing white setae. Below this is another bluish-white line about three times the breadth of the former white line, but cut about the lower third by a ragged green line on the line of the third row of white setae-bearing moles. This is followed by a brown- edged dark green line and then a thinnish bluish-white line followed by a dark green line darkly edged above. This line includes the spiracles on the lighter portion. The lateral ridge is bluish-white and includes the double setae. Below, the larva is dark green for a third of the ventral portions on each side, the centre underneath is pale green. The dark green is divided by a bluish-white line edged thinly above and below by brown. The posterior segments shade off to pale salmon-yellow. With no food in the body the colours are white and salmon, with green on the ventral portion. The brown portions in some larvae are more inclined to dull purple.
Second instar. The larvae have a whitish ground-colour with dull purple dorsal, subdorsal, lateral and spiracular stripes. Between the subdorsal and lateral line there is a very thin brown line. The body is covered with small white setae on white moles, arranged in rows; the setae of the first instar are still present and much larger than the rest. The instar lasts 12-13 days, and the larvae grow to 10-101⁄2 mm.
The larvae split into two groups. One group goes right through feeding normally, but growing slowly; the other grows more rapidly and aestivates in the fourth instar. The larval period is eighty-three days for non-aestivating larvae, and about six weeks longer in aestivating ones.
Pupa. Light green, 13-141⁄2 mm long by 5 mm wide. Pupal stage about twelve days.
Larval food:
Dactyloctenium austral Steud. (Poaceae) [Otto et al., 2013: 72].
Ehrharta erecta Lam. (Poaceae) [Dickson & Kroon, 1978: 42; in captivity].
Panicum maximum Jacq. (Poaceae) [Otto et al., 2013: 72].
Pennisetum clandestinum Hochst. ex Chiov. (Poaceae) [Williams, in Pringle et al., 1994: 60; in captivity].
IUCN Conservation status: Least Concern.
https://metamorphosis.org.za/articlesPD ... engren.pdf
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/349119 ... eura-panda
J. Irish, Namibia Biodiversity Database Web Site.
