left : type "B" - right : type "A"
left : ethica - right quotidiana
in Ecuador Oriente we're supposed to have two subspecies of Scada zibia and only one of Scada reckia, and for zibia we have one subspecies type "A", batesi, and one subspecies type "B", quotidiana (see above).
as a matter of fact there is a second ssp of reckia - ruiza, described by K R Willmott in 2021 - but only in the South of Loja Province, and thanks to Vyacheslav Doroshkin and Cristina Restrepo we learnt that perpuncta (also rearranged as zibia perpuncta ?), the Colombian subspecies, also flies in Ecuador, near la Bonita and San Pedro de los Cofanes.
zibia - batesi and quotidiana were described as species in the early 20th century, and Charles W Fox had them as separate species, which seems to make sense as they are apparently fully sympatric all over North East Ecuador (see map) ? we do not know why they were made sspp of zibia ? but as 1 - subspecies are not supposed to be sympatric, and 2 - these two taxons are extremely different from each other, we, pending a revision of the Genus, keep batesi and quotidiana as separate species.
telling ethica (reckia) from quotidiana (zibia) should not be too difficult, two features : 1 - ethica, normally, has an additional white dot in the HW black margin near the wingbase, 2 - the FW yellow postdiscal patch of ethica is more rounded and does not get near the outer margin, while in quotidiana it is "flat", elongated, and gets close to the submarginal white dots near the distal end of the black stripe (see above).... but....
doubts remain because, if you look at the types of "reckia ethica" illustrated on BoA you see it's not obvious, as, for some types, there is no visible additional dot, and the yellow patch is not really rounded ; more work is clearly needed.
if our identifications are right ethica would be very rare in Ecuador ; on our Sangay and North East sites, out of :
- 14 specimens, we have 1 ethica (a female) and 13 quotidiana, and out of
- 24 live pictures, we have 3 ethica (two individuals) and 21 quotidiana.
