wingspan : 40 mm
we found many Perisama hazarma in the center of Sangay NP, when Attal & Crosson du Cormier state, in 1996, that the nearest populations are more than 200 km away.
in 2008 we also found P. hazarma on the Southern limit of the NP, in the rio Paute valley.
on the "new facts" page we give the reasons why we consider P. hazarma davidi not to be a valid ssp.
proposal to invalidate subspecies Perisama hazarma davidi
in their 1996 book, Attal & Crosson du Cormier list two Perisama hazarma subspecies :
- P. hazarma hazarma which flies in a small area (50 km by 30 (?)) between rio Napo and rio Coca.
- and P. hazarma davidi, exceedingly rare, which flies in an even smaller area in the upper rio Zamora valley (it is so scarce that the authors know only of three specimens, two in the British Museum (Natural History) and a third one collected near Loja).
and there is no other subspecies, and no other population, for all of South America.
all the many P. hazarma we collected and photographed are not identical, so the distinctive features of the new ssp - davidi - look inconclusive :
- UP, the blue band is longer,
- UN
. a more "golden" yellow,
. HW outer margins "blackish" or "alternated", unclear.
but, with 500 km between these two small populations, it looked it would make sense to describe a new ssp.
the problem is that Sangay NP P. hazarma population, unknown to the authors, is much bigger than the one from the North, not to mention the South one ; and on top of that no one has a right to say that P. hazarma does not fly in the Llanganates or above Plan de Milagro for instance, you have to go there first, and look for it.
so,
. with no geographic isolation,
. with no visible distinctive features,
. and not knowing what is going on in most of the Oriente Ecuatoriano,
one cannot substantiate the validity of P. hazarma davidi.
