ON : Talicada metana Riley & Godfrey, 1921 OD : J. nat. Hist. Soc. Siam 4(3):181, pl.6, fig.4,♀. TL : '"Me Song forest, Prae, N.Siam" [Mae Song, Phrae, N.Thailand]'. (NHML) Distribution : 'Thailand (Phrae)'. ● ssp.burmana ● ssp.metana ● ssp.macbethi ● ssp.annamitica

Holotype ♀, Rh.127. Apr.1918. Me Song forest, Prae [Mae Song, Phrae], N.Siam. (NHML)

[ THAILAND ]
Talicada metana ; Godfrey,1930 : 314. (Prae: Me Song forest)
Talicada nyseus metana ; Pinratana,1981 : 40, 162. not fig. ('Kanchanaburi' [loc.err.]; Phrae)
Talicada metana ; Ek-Amnuay,[2007] : 560, not fig. (Phrae)
'Talicada metana [Talicada nyseus nyseus] ; Ek-Amnuay,2012 : 576, pl.261, fig.L99,♂([India])'
Talicada metana ; Kimura et al.,2014 : 184. (by literature)

The butterfly is very rare, known only from the holotype female from 'Phrae, N.Thailand'. However, the type locality seems to be rather doubtful. Lo et al. (2017) treated it as a subspecies of nyseus.
Some of the species recorded by Godfrey as being from 'Mae Song forest, Phrae', have subsequently not been found in Thailand at all. And most of them are known from C. to S. Vietnam. I suspect they are contaminated with Vietnamese specimens or this is an erroneous locality. This species is one of those cases. If, so, the taxon Talicada nyseus annamitica may be a synonym of metana. Further distributional and taxonomic studies are needed.

Riley, N.D. & Godfrey, E.J.,1921 : Some Undescribed Rhopalocera from Siam.
J. nat. Hist. Soc. Siam 4(3):167-190. 3 pls.

Lo, Y.F.P., Li, F. & Ding, L.,2017 : Description of a new subspecies of Talicada nyseus (Guérin-Méneville,1843) from Hainan, China (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae), with notes on the genus Talicada Moore,1881
Zootaxa 4269(4):586-592.

1999.06.24 - 2024.06.30.