Caleta (butterfly)

Caleta is a genus of butterflies in the family Lycaenidae, mainly found in Southeast Asia. The common name Pierrot is used for some species.

Caleta
Angled Pierrot (Caleta decidia) in Talakona forest, Andhra Pradesh, India
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Lycaenidae
Subfamily: Polyommatinae
Tribe: Polyommatini
Genus: Caleta
Fruhstorfer, 1922

Species

In his generic classification of the Polyommatini, Toshiya Hirowatari included nine species in Caleta:

  • Caleta argola (Hewitson), [1876] Philippine Islands
  • Caleta caleta (Hewitson), [1876]
  • Caleta celebensis (Staudinger), 1889
  • Caleta decidia (Hewitson), [1876]
  • Caleta elna (Hewitson), [1876]
  • Caleta manovus (Fruhstorfer), 1918 Borneo
  • Caleta mindarus (C. & R. Felder), [1865] New Guinea, New Britain
  • Caleta rhode (Hopffer), 1871 Lesser Sunda Islands, Sulawesi, Buru, Banggai, Timor
  • Caleta roxus (Godart), [1824]
Cladistics of Caleta after Hirowatari, 1992

Ecology

Recorded host plants include Ziziphus oenoplia (Rhamnaceae).

Taxonomy

The genus Caleta was erected by Hans Fruhstorfer in 1922 in Adalbert Seitz's Die Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde (The Macrolepidoptera of the World).

Another genus-level name, Pycnophallium, was erected by the Dutch lepidopterist Lambertus Johannes Toxopeus in 1929. He included two Oriental species under this name: Pycnophallium roxus Godart and Pycnophallium elna Hewitson. These species had previously been treated as species in the genera Lycaena or Castalius until Hans Fruhstorfer erected Caleta in 1922. Although Caleta in the wide sense has not been fully revised since Fruhstorfer erected it, Hirowatari, 1992,[1] made an authoritative classification of Oriental polyommatine genera. Hirowatari did not recognise Pycnophallium as a valid genus, but retained nine species, including roxus and elna in Caleta.

References
  1. Hirowatari Toshiya, A Generic Classification of the Tribe Polyommatini of the Oriental and Australian Regions : Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae, Polyommatinae
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