REVISION OF GENUS ZAMARADA g 



The Indo-Malayan element of the genus ranges from N. India, through Burma, 

 Malaysia and Indonesia as far eastwards as the Tanimbar Islands. This element of the 

 genus includes only nine species, forming two species-groups, contrasting markedly 

 with the rich representation of over 200 species in the Ethiopian region. Both 

 Oriental species-groups show some degree of subspeciation, but are structurally 

 quite remote from any Ethiopian species-group; their isolation is evidently ancient 

 and they may represent a depauperate fauna. 



Among the 200 Ethiopian species a number of well-defined species-groups are 

 recognizable; equally there are numerous species which appear to be taxonomically 

 isolated, without any close affinity, perhaps survivors of species-groups reduced 

 to single species by extinction. Data labels on all but very few specimens are 

 inadequate to relate precisely the moths studied to the vegetation zones in which 

 they were taken and the following discussion on their distribution can only be 

 tentative in that respect. Speciation has taken place most richly in the lowland 

 rain forest of the Congo Basin and West Africa, where 65 % of the Ethiopian species 

 occur; of the 139 lowland forest species, 124 are known from the great forested 

 area of Nigeria-Cameroun-Gabon-Congo. Collecting at two stations in the lowland 

 rain forest a few kilometres north of Edea in Cameroun during late March and early 

 April 1970, Monsieur C. Herbulot took over forty species of Zamarada; from similar 

 country H. L. Weber collected 64 species at Efulen over a period of twelve years. 

 Dissection of the lowland rain forest by drought conditions in the past has probably 

 afforded the conditions of periodic isolation necessary for such extensive speciation. 

 Some of the forest species now have a discontinuous distribution east of the Congo 

 Basin, being represented by isolated populations in, for example, Bwamba Forest 

 in Western Uganda, the Kakamega district of Western Kenya and at Amani in the 

 Eastern Usambara Mountains in Tanzania. In a number of instances species 

 exhibit geographic variation; the nominate subspecies of Z. labifera Prout occurs 

 widely in the lowland rain forest from Guinea to Cameroun and in Zaire, but is 

 represented at Amani by a structurally distinct subspecies. Z. candelabra sp. n., 

 Z. dentigera Warren and Z. reflexaria Walker shew similar patterns. 



Only two forest species are recorded from Ethiopia; Z. melpomene Oberthiir, 

 which has a very wide distribution in Africa, and Z. excavata Bethune-Baker. 

 The Ethiopian populations of the latter species have been isolated and become 

 subspecifically distinct. 



There is some evidence to suggest that the distribution of several of the West 

 African lowland forest species is limited by the break in the forest belt, the Dahomey 

 Gap, situated approximately between Lagos in Western Nigeria and Accra in 

 Eastern Ghana, and again by the constriction of the lowland forest belt near Kumba 

 in Cameroun, where it is bordered in the north by the montane forest extending 

 along the Bamenda-Banso highlands and in the south by Mount Cameroun. These 

 suggestions are tentative, as the distributional data available may well prove in 

 some instances simply to reflect the distribution of collectors. 



Thirty lowland forest species have distributions comparable with that of Z. 

 melanopyga Herbulot, which extends from Sierra Leone to Angola. 



The distribution of 15 species is comparable with that of Z. leona Gaede, which 



