Pantoporia mera Swinhoe 1917

A note on the taxonomic status of Pantoporia mera Swinhoe, 1917 Swinhoe (1917) described P. mera as follows: “ Pantoporia mera, nov. ♂. Belongs to the inara group, is smaller, the fore wing shorter, the outer margin is less concave, the pattern on the upperside is very similar, but the cell-streak is more attenuated, the white spot in it smaller, the orange submarginal band incomplete, narrower at the apex, then broken, a spot in continuation on the middle, and faint indications of a grey line downwards to the hinder angle. The underside, however, is very different to the underside of inara, especially on the hind wing, the middle white band being more even, not attenuated to a point at the abdominal fold as it is in inara; the black discal row of spots is absent or only very faintly indicated, and the white postdiscal band is broader. Expanse of wings 22 / 10 inches. Hab. Borneo.” Thus, Swinhoe had already realised that P. mera was close to A. inara. Comparison of primary types of these two taxa and images of A. i. inara in its E Himalayan and NE Indian range reveals that the slight variation represented by the type of mera falls within the intra-population variation seen in the range of A. inara. Furthermore, the type locality of mera specified by Swinhoe—“Borneo”—is clearly in error. The phenotype of mera does not occur in Borneo, where A. nefte matthiola (Fruhstorfer, 1913) (type locality Borneo) represents a black-and-white male phenotype very similar to A. n. nefte. Thus, it is likely that the type of mera was collected in NE India, Bangladesh or N Myanmar but mistakenly labelled as being from Borneo. Therefore, based on the similarity of the type specimens (Fig. 9), we propose synonymy of Pantoporia mera Swinhoe, 1917 syn. nov. = Athyma inara Westwood, 1850.