Perisama Doubleday 1849

Perisama Doubleday, [1849] sensu novo = Orophila Staudinger, 1886 = Mesotaenia Kirby, 1871 Diagnosis: The imago of Perisama can immediately be recognized from other Neotropical butterflies, in particular from the most closely related and similarly patterned on the upperside, Callicorini Diaethria, sharing with Perisama oblique postdiscal FW and HW submarginal greenish bands, by mostly white or yellow HW ventral ground colour, with parallel ventral median and postdiscal lines enclosing a row of blackish spots, although in some species they can be vestigial or obsolete, and contrary to Diaethria, not clustering into two groups of one or two spots (thus the common name of the latter “eighty-eights” or “eighty-nines”), and never fully developed ocelli, contrary to Callicore. Redescription: Adults: medium size, forewing length 16–23 mm (mean = 21 mm, n=142). Head: eyes light or dark brown, setose; antennae reaching to 2/3 the length of costa, dorsally brown, ventrally lighter, with packs of lightly coloured scales at each flagellomere, club elongated or rounded, flattened dorso-ventrally, approximately two times thicker than shaft; labial palpi one and half the length of head, dorsally brown, ventrally lighter. Thorax: brown or black, with dorsal and ventral surface covered with long, hair-like scales, matching the DH and VH coloration, respectively; legs with light brown to pale yellow or white femur, underside covered with long hair similar to those on the underside of thorax, tibia and tarsus darker than femur, covered with light brown scales, tibial spurs present. FW triangular with outer margin slightly convex or wavy; DF ground colour black or blackish-brown with metallic blue markings; VF ground colour same as DF, sometimes with red or yellow basal patch and smaller metallic markings, the colour of apical area matches the HV ground colour; HW rounded, with more or less wavy outer margin; DH ground colour black or blackish-brown with ashen-blue and metallic blue markings; VH ground colour: various shades of white, grey, yellow or brown, with two black lines (sometimes reduced) and, sometimes, five or six dots between the lines. Abdomen: brown or black, partly covered with long hair-like scales, similar to those on thorax; male genitalia with long valvae, rounded posteriorly, uncus slightly curved ventrally, shorter than tegumen, hairy, with a sharp tip, tegumen wide and regularly domed, gnathos long and slim, almost as long as uncus, vinculum with a lobe-like, hairy process located below the valva, saccus long and thin, slightly arched ventrally, aedeagus long and thin, arched dorsally, hypandrium with a wide, semicircular proximal incision, distal end in a form of U-shaped or W-shaped fork, depending on the species, sometimes with additional spines, collar long and narrow, widening over into the triangular body; female genitalia with papillae anales slightly sclerotized interiorly, thin apophyses posteriores with club-shaped tips, ostium bursae wide and irregularly shaped; lamella antevaginalis expanded into a large pleated lobe; posterior half of ductus bursae sclerotized, followed by a wider, membranous part, widening gradually into corpus bursae; signa as two small sclerotized dots, corpus bursae oval, as long as ductus bursae. Immature stages (data available for P. oppelii, P. bomplandii and P. barnesi): larvae light green, round in cross-section, with paler sides and two parallel rows of yellow papillae on the dorsal surface with small black thorns sticking out of each papilla; head square in shape, brown, with brown, branched scoli; final instar about 2 cm long; pre-pupa pale green with orange-brown scoli, larvae spin a white silk pad on dorsal surface of a leaf; pupa emerald green, robust in shape, with small white punctuations; head with two short projections; dorsolateral keel along edge of wing pad; larval host plants Paullinia sp. (Sapindaceae) (Greeney et al. 2010) and Weinmannia sp. (Cunionaceae) (Romero 1997).