The Pantepui Tablelands are an area of sandstone tabletop mountains
mainly located within southeastern Venezuela, but also extending into Guyana
and Brazil. The area is poorly explored, but is thought to be a biodiversity
hotspot, with a distinct flora and fauna of its own. Three new Butterfly
species have been described from the area in the past decade, and it is thought
that the Pantepui could be home to a large number of endemic species.
In a paper published in the journal Zootaxa on 5 November 2014,
Shinichi Nakahara of the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the
Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, Steven Fratello
of West Islip in New York and Donald Harvey of the Department of Entomology at
the Smithsonian Institution describe a new species of Satyrine Butterfly from
the Guyanan side of Mount Roraima, which lies on the border between Guyana,
Venezuela and Brazil in the Pantepui Tablelands.
The new species is placed in the genus Euptychia and given the specific name roraima, in reference to the area where it was found. The species
is described from a single male specimen collected in April 2001 at an altitude
of 800 m on the north slope of Mount Roraima, by Romeo Williams and Wiltshire
Hinds during a joint expedition by the Smithsonian Institution and the
University of Guyana.
Male of Euptychia roraima
from Mount Roraima, Guyana; left, dorsum, right, venter. Scale bar is 10 mm.
Nakahara et al. (2014).
The single specimen of Euptychia roraima
has a forewing length of 16 mm and is dark brown in colour with spots on its
wings and a hairy body.
The northeast slope of Mt. Roraimataken from a
clearing at approximately 1300m. Nakahara et
al. (2014).
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