Thursday, November 12, 2009

Drepanosticta fontinalis

Actually, Drepanosticta fontinalis (photo below) and D. quadrata are equally common platystid species in Peninsular Malaysia. From my own observation, it seems that D. quadrata is more confined to southern part of Peninsular Malaysia while D. fontinalis is to northern part of Peninsular Malaysia. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that both D. fontinalis and D. quadrata are the same species but different variants. The illustrations of anal appendages for D. fontinalis in Lieftinck (1937) and D. quadrata in Lieftinck (1965) do not seem to be different for me. The blue marking on the abdominal segment 8 is just not too reliable.