Tying up some loose ends from Yen Bai

There are some loose ends, various interesting (I hope) photos from Yen Bai from the weekend of May 10 and 11 that I would like to share.

For one, I saw a great many Mnais andersoni this time. What is very interesting are two aspects. None of the orange-winged males (many) had a pruinose dorsum to the thorax, quite contrary to what I noticed for M. mneme. On the web there are many photos with pruinosity, but I fail to find ones that also show the penile organ to show the true identity of the species. For the populations here it seems a consistent difference. The other aspect of interest was that the hyaline-winged specimens were far outnumbering the already quite common orange-winged ones. This also is very different from the population of M. mneme in Xuan Son, where the hyaline males are rare.

A mature male hyaline-winged form of Mnais andersoni

And the same for the orange-winged form. Note the complete lack of pruinosity on the dorsum of the thorax.

Another interesting aspect these two days was the common appearance of Idionyx carinata. I doubted for a moment that it was this species and not something similar, but the males that I caught were clearly I. carinata. Females were variable, some showing only a small yellow spot on the anteclypeus, but other showing all yellow labrum.

Female Idionyx carinata hanging from a twig

Face of one female Idionyx carinata with only limited yellow and single horn

Another female Idionyx carinata with almost completely yellow labrum and double horn

One of several males caught, clearly I. carinata

As his "thing" shows

Another interesting observation was of a female Devadatta ducatrix. Below a photo:

Female Devadatta ducatrix, more colorful than the male