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Kitching, I

Rubinoff, Daniel

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Daphnis placiDa, a New SphiNx Moth for GuaM 79NEW RECORDS AND ACCOUNTSDaphnis placida, a New Species of Sphinx Mothfor Guam, U.S.A.Daniel Rubinoff1 and Ian Kitching21310 Gilmore Hall, Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences,University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI. 96822, USA2Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK. Corresponding author: Rubinoff@hawaii.edu Guam, the largest of the Mariana Islands, has been the subject of a long series of invasions, dating back to hu-man colonization and our commensals almost 4,000 years ago. The invasion of the Brown Tree Snake (Boiga irregularis ) in the 1940s led to the extermination of virtually all of Guam’s native birds. The more recent invasion of the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros) is devastating native and ornamental palms across the island. Thus, understanding the nature of any invasion in Guam may be helpful in preventing future challenges to its beleaguered ecosystems.  On April 7, 2015, while conducting biological surveys on Andersen Air Force Base, the first author encountered a pair of sphinx moths that were perched on a fence, facing each other, strongly suggest-ing that they had been in copula the night before. Only the female was captured, and subsequently identified by the second author as Daphnis placida (Walker, 1856), a species not previously recorded from Guam. The specimen is deposited in the University of Hawaii Insect Museum.  D. placida is widespread across Aus-tralasia, though it rarely comes to light, making it uncommonly seen by those not specifically searching for it. Thus, it is not clear whether this species represents a new, recent invasion of Guam, or a native species that has previously gone undetect-ed. The Ritidian Point area where the D. placida was found is shared with Hasora chromus (Cramer, [1780]), Hesperiidae, a skipper butterfly that is also widespread across southeast Asia but is only found in the Mariana islands at Ritidian point on Guam (Schriener and Nafus, 1997). This skipper was, in fact, sighted the same day by the first author, not far from where the D. placida was found. It is possible that the Ritidian Point area serves as a refuge for some native Guamanian insects which are now, or always were, highly restricted on the island. Unless D. placida becomes much more common and widespread in coming years, it is conceivable that a small population has been resident on Ritidian Point for a very long time and that, rather than representing a new invasion, this spe-cies is yet another isolated native species that has until now escaped notice.  The larval host plants of D. placida on Guam are unknown. In Australia and the Solomon Islands, the recorded plants are Alstonia, Ochrosia, Tabernaemontana (all Apocynaceae) and Alangium (Corna-ceae) (Bigger, 1988; Moulds, 1998). There are no Cornaceae on Guam but there are the endemic  Ochrosia mariannensis and Tabernaemontana rotensis, the latter of which is only found on northern Guam and, sparsely, on the island of Rota, just to the north. T. rotensis is quite rare and has been proposed for listing as threatened proceeDings of the hawaiian ent mological society (2015) 47:79–8180 rubiNoff aNd KitchiNG Figure 1. Dorsal view of Daphnis placida female from Guam.Figure 2. Ventral view of Daphnis placida female from Guam.		Daphnis placiDa, a New SphiNx Moth for GuaM 81under the United States Endangered Spe-cies Act. If D. placida is native to Guam, then it is unlikely to threaten T. rotensis; however if it is a new arrival, then it could pose a threat to this rare plant. Acknowledgments We thank M. Wright (University of Ha-waii), B. Holland (University of Hawaii) and A. Gawel (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) for assistance in the field, A. Gawel for expertise in identifying possible hostplants, and L. Wada (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) for invaluable support across many aspects of this study. We thank Dana T. Lujan, NAVFAC Mari-anas, 36th Civil Engineering Squadron, Andersen Air Force Base for facilitating access and funding for this survey. This work benefitted from ongoing survey work supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Rubinoff was also supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project HAW00956-H, managed by the College of Tropical Agri-culture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii.Literature citedBigger, T.R.L. 1988. The insect pests of for-est plantation trees in the Solomon Islands. Solomon Islands Forest Record 4: 1–190.Moulds, M.S. 1998. New larval food plants for Australian hawk moths (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) Australian Entomologist 25: 13–22.Schriener, I. H. and D. M. Nafus. 1997. But-terflies of Micronesia. University of Guam Press. 82 rubiNoff aNd KitchiNG 

Daphnis placida, a new species of Sphinx moth for Guam, U.S.A.

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