Coeliccia sp*

*Early 2017 this post was adjusted and again on January 2, 2020. The species occurring in Cat Tien is now published as Coeliccia rolandorum Kosterin & Kompier, 2017. Below is the original text, still full of confusion about the two species that Asahina had described. See our 2017 paper for the answer to this riddle.

In the first week of August I was in Cat Tien National Park, and blablabla. Anyway, after some hard searching for forest damsels in the shade of the rainy rainforest, I ran into a small Coeliccia species with rather dull coloring. Once I understood where to look for it, close to the river, but inside the forest and low by the ground in the darker areas, I saw several more. Although the first few were immature, I also saw older individuals, with more whitish markings on the last abdominal segments, but they all had the same basic yellow-brown thorax markings, not a sign of blue.

Asahina described two small and structurally similar species from Thailand, C. kazukoae and C. megumii. Later some doubt was cast on whether these were not in fact the same species, with C. kazukoae the immature yellowish form of the black-and-blue C. megumii. Oleg Kosterin has shown these two species are in fact synonyms and lumped them as C. kazukoae. The species present in Cat Tien is however different from C. kazukoae. It will shortly be described.

Although mature and blackish on part of the thorax, no bright blue anywhere in sight. Male Coeliccia sp.

An immature female

And an immature male

The typical double lobed superior appendages of C. sp

Dorsal view of the same appendages

And the dorsal side of head. This is an immature, but kept to age a little