''Artitropa erinnys'', the bush night-fighter, is a

butterfly Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...

of the family

Hesperiidae Skippers are a family of the Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) named the Hesperiidae. Being diurnal, they are generally called butterflies. They were previously placed in a separate superfamily, Hesperioidea; however, the most recent taxonomy ...

. It is found from the East Cape to

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...

Transvaal Transvaal is a historical geographic term associated with land north of (''i.e.'', beyond) the Vaal River in South Africa. A number of states and administrative divisions have carried the name Transvaal. * South African Republic (1856–1902; af, ...

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

and eastern

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. The

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

is 53–57 mm for males and 59–63 mm for females. Adults are on wing year-round but are scarce from May to August. The larvae feed on '' Dracaena hookeriana'', ''

Dracaena afromontana ''Dracaena afromontana'' is a species of flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae, native to the highlands of eastern tropical Africa; South Sudan (Imatong Mountains), Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Ken ...

'', '' Dracaena angustifolia'', ''

Dracaena fragrans ''Dracaena fragrans'' (cornstalk dracaena), is a flowering plant species that is native throughout tropical Africa, from Sudan south to Mozambique, west to Côte d'Ivoire and southwest to Angola, growing in upland regions at altitude.JSTOR Plant ...

'' and '' Dracaena steudneri''.

Subspecies

*''Artitropa erinnys erinnys'' (southern Mozambique, Eswatini, South Africa: coastal lowland and riverine forest from the eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal coast to Maputaland, spreading to the Limpopo Province) *''Artitropa erinnys comorarum'' Oberthür, 1916 (Comoro Islands: Grand Comore, Anjouan) *''Artitropa erinnys ehlersi'' Karsch, 1896 (Kenya: Mount Sagala, Teita Hills, Shimba Hills, Tanzania: from the coast inland to Arusha) *''Artitropa erinnys nyasae'' Riley, 1925 (eastern Zimbabwe, southern Malawi) *''Artitropa erinnys radiata'' Riley, 1925 (Kenya) *''Artitropa erinnys vansommereni'' Riley, 1925 (Kenya: Meru, Nairobi, Ngong)

References

Butterflies described in 1862 Erionotini {{Erionotini-stub