wingspan : 47/50 mm
the first Phanus grandis (Ernst Brockmann) we collected was a female ;
it is a very rare species that flies in Central America, Venezuela and Colombia. it had not been reported from Ecuador, and it is surprising that we found it at the Southern limit of Sangay NP, very far from Colombia.
then we saw more females and males near Macas and Pablo Sexto; Phanus grandis is not scarce in the Eastern part of Sangay NP.
in 1993 George T Austin described Phanus grandis, a new species.
he considers it to be "very rare", and bases his description on:
- three females collected in Panama, Venezuela and Colombia,
- three males, "tentatively assigned to this species", from Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia (Muzo),
- and he knows of a fourth female from Venezuela.
today, on butterfliesofamerica, one finds these same butterflies, with the addition of a set specimen from Venezuela, and of two pictures of live butterflies taken by Richard Lehman in Nicaragua in 2003 .
more specimens have certainly been collected, but we don't know them.
so Phanus grandis is, at least, an uncommon species, flying from Nicaragua to Venezuela, the Southernmost record being Muzo.
we had never seen any when, in 2011, we caught a female 1500 km South of Muzo, in the rio Paute valley.
since that time, between rio Pastaza and rio Paute we collected and photographed about a dozen Phanus grandis, which is probably more than what had been collected previously ; but the point is they were all found in a very small area (about 70 km between the two rivers).
a few years later we found it in the Reserva Cotacachi Cayapas.
