''Trida sarahae'', or Sarah's ranger, is a species of

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 ...

in 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 only known from the

Cederberg The Cederberg mountains are located near Clanwilliam, approximately 300 km north of Cape Town, South Africa at about . The mountain range is named after the endangered Clanwilliam cedar (''Widdringtonia wallichii''), which is a tree end ...

mountains in the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

. 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 31–34 mm for males and 54–63 mm for females. Adults are on wing in late September. The

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. The ...

e probably feed on ''

Merxmuellera ''Merxmuellera'' is a genus of African grasses named for Hermann Merxmueller, a 20th century German botanist and taxonomist who was an expert on African flora. Species ''Merxmuellera'' contains the following species: * '' Merxmuellera ambalavao ...

'' species.Afrotropical Butterflies: Hesperiidae - Subfamily Hesperiinae
/ref>

References

External links

* Butterflies described in 1998 Endemic butterflies of South Africa {{Hesperiinae-stub