Diagnoses of genera of South East Asia: Pharacocerus (?; ?).
Elsewhere (?; 4-6). Before 1992, when Song and Chai described the two species
P. hirticeps and P. orientalis from S. China, no new species of
the small genus Pharacocerus had been described since 1941. Save for
one species from Madagascar, all the others come from W. Africa. Simon placed
the genus Pharacocerus in his Plexippeae. (Due to the sort of variation
that can occur in the characters Simon uses to separate his groups Hylleae from
the Plexippeae which are both in his Unidentati, it can be difficult, even with
a microscope, to decide with confidence to which group a particular specimen
belongs. Even then and for much the same reason, it is not always easy within
the group to decide to which genus the specimen belongs.) Certainly from figures
in the literature for the African species P. fagei, Pharacocerus
looks to be close to Plexippus (see Section 51.7) in general appearance.
One tip which can be helpful is that specimens with relatively large rear eyes
tend to belong to the Plexippeae, whilst those with rather small rear eyes tend
to belong to the Hylleae
Distribution: The main centre for Pharacocerus is W. Africa, but
there is a single species recorded from Madagascar and two species from S. China.
Murphy & Murphy 2000: 276. By
courtesy of the Authors' and the Malaysian Nature Society.
Copyright © for the page by J. Proszynski, 1999.