THE TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO FIELD NATURALISTS’ CLUB The Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club was founded on 10 July, 1891. Its name was incorporated by an Act of Parliament (Act 17 of 1991). The objects of the Club are to bring together persons interested in the study of natural history, the diffusion of knowledge thereof and the conservation of nature. Monthly meetings are held at St. Mary’s College on the second Thursday of every month except December. Club. Mission Statement To foster education and knowledge of natural history and to encourage and promote activities that lead to the appreciation, preservation and conservation of our natural heritage. Management Committee 2013 - 2014 Editorial Committee President Kris Sookdeo Graham White (Editor) Vice President Palaash Narase Yasmin Comeau Secretary Eddison Baptiste Bill Murphy Assistant Secretary Yvette Adams Palaash Narase (Representing the Treasurer Selwyn Gomes Publications Committee) Committee Members Dan Jaggernauth Glen Wilkes Amy Deacon Enquiries All enquiries concerning the Club should be addressed to: The Honorary Secretary P.O. Box 642, Port of Spain Republic of Trinidad and Tobago E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ttfnc.org LIVING WORLD Journal of The Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club 2014 Inca clathrata quesneli Boos and Ratcliffe Published December, 2014 Living World is published by The Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club. All rights reserved. ISSN 1029-3299 Editorial The 2014 issue of Living World represents a change poles of Mannophryne trinitatis from M. olmonae but in Editor and new additions to the editorial team. Dr El- generally advise us to read the collection location off isha Tikasingh has retired after 15 years serving as the the label! Roger, this time working with N.J. Barron and Editor as described in the Editorial of the 2013 issue. We Mark Greener, describes the nesting of the Gladiator thank Dr Tikasingh for his hard work in getting the Liv- Frog. ing World to its current standard. The editorial team now Studies on the Trinidad Motmot in Tobago have includes Graham White (Editor), Yasmin Comeau, Bill demonstrated for the first time the use of an anvil by that Murphy and Palaash Narase. While the team has changed, species for feeding on snails and other hard prey. We our vision for the Journal has not. We will continue to thank Mike Rutherford and Giovanni Bianco for this encourage the publication of studies and observations on interesting study and encourage readers to see a video the natural history of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider of this for themselves on the TTFNC webpage at www. region. We will continue to encourage Nature Notes so ttfnc.org that rare occurrences or observations are recorded and All naturalists are familiar with and most have some not forgotten and we will continue to honour those nat- affinity for praying mantises. In this issue Mark Greener uralists with outstanding contributions to our knowledge and Mike Rutherford provide us with an account of the of our natural history. This year we have instituted a new mantids of Trinidad and Tobago together with a well-il- section containing reviews. This section will be by invi- lustrated key to help us identify those species which we tation only and address subjects for which we consider may come across. a review timely or which might encourage further work. The Nature Notes section includes observations of To create wider circulation and accessibility, we plan opilionids and spiders, a leucistic hummingbird and a to be on-line by the next issue with the backlog of past pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins in Tobago, new records issues becoming available on-line in a searchable format of mantids, scorpions and bats from Huevos Island and soon after. an account of a location in Tobago well-stocked with in- This, the 2014 issue contains six research papers, vasive species. eight Nature Notes, the report of the bird records com- We have our regular report from the Trinidad and To- mittee, a review of our knowledge, or lack thereof, of bago Bird Status and Distribution Committee. This re- Social Insects in the West Indies and two of our Notable port includes 90 observations and tells us that the check- Naturalists are highlighted. list for Trinidad and Tobago at the end of 2013 stood at Matthew Cock has completed his mammoth task of 473 species. cataloguing the butterflies of the family Hesperiidae, Two of our Notable Naturalists are highlighted. It is which was published over the last 23 years. This year he fitting that one of these is our outgoing Editor, Dr Elisha has provided us with an account of the biology of several Tikasingh. The other, A.M. Adamson, was of an earlier of the skipper butterflies of Trinidad. vintage. A team of authors, Ryan Mohammed, Shiva Manick- Our new review section contains an account of our chan, Stevland Charles and John Murphy, has given an knowledge, or lack thereof, of Social Insects in the West account of the herpetofauna of southeast Trinidad, bring- Indies. We thank Chris Starr for this review. ing together past studies and collected specimens. We have two papers on amphibians. Roger Downie GW, June 2014 and M. Nokhbatolfoghahai tell us how to separate tad- Cover Photograph This Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (Stenella frontalis) was one of a group of dolphins seen off the South East Coast of Trinidad and was photographed by Kerrie T. Naranjit. The Atlantic spotted dolphin is one of 19 species of cetacean known to inhabit the waters around Trinidad and Tobago. See Nature Note on page 51 which reports a sighting of this species among a large school of dolphins off the coast of Charlotteville, Tobago in 2012. Special thanks to Michael E. Tikasingh for the design and layout of the front and back covers. ii Observations on the Biology of Skipper Butterflies in Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago: Phocides, Chioides, Typhedanus, and Polythrix (Hesperiidae: Eudaminae) Matthew J.W. Cock c/o CABI, Bakeham Lane, Egham, Surrey TW20 9TY, UK. [email protected] / [email protected] ABSTRACT Observations are provided on the early stages and food plants of Phocides polybius polybius (Fabricius), P. pigmalion pigmalion (Cramer), Chioides catillus catillus (Cramer), Typhedanus undulatus (Hewitson), Polythrix auginus (Hewitson), P. caunus (Herrich-Schäffer), P. metallescens (Mabille), P. octomaculata (Sepp), Polythrix roma Evans from Trinidad, supplemented with observations on Phocides polybius lilea (Reakirt) and Polythrix octomaculata in Mexico. Key words (not in title): egg, caterpillar, larva, pupa, leaf shelter, parasitoid, Mexico, guava. INTRODUCTION phanias (Burmeister) from southern Brazil to Argentina. In 1981, I started to publish a series of papers in Liv- The biology of ssp. phanias on guava (Psidium guaja- ing World to document the butterfly family Hesperiidae va; Myrtaceae) was documented more than 100 years in Trinidad (Cock 1981), which at that time was only ago (Jones 1882-3, as Pyrrhopyga palemon (Cramer), documented with lists of recorded species (Kaye 1921, a synonym), and more recently by Moss (1949). Other 1940; Barcant 1970). In 2013, the final, twentieth part reported food plants for P. polybius phanias include Eu- was published in Living World (Cock 2013), “an integral calyptus, Eugenia, and Myrciaria spp. (all Myrtaceae) in part of the building of a knowledge base on the biodiver- Argentina and Brazil (Beccaloni et al. 2008). sity of the country,” (Kenny 2007). The early stages of ssp. polybius on guava have been However, the classification used in the early parts, in- described from Trinidad (Cock 1984). It is not a difficult cluding the checklist (Cock 1982), is now out of date. species to find as a caterpillar, although seldom seen as Some names have changed and much new information an adult. To supplement the earlier account which lacked and new records are available on biology and distribu- illustrations, these are now provided for the shelters (Fig. tion. In a separate publication I have prepared a new 1), n-2 instar (Fig. 2), newly moulted final instar (Fig. checklist, including new records, which brings the total 3), before it acquires the white body colouring (Fig. 4), known species from Trinidad to 307 (Cock 2014). pupa (Fig. 5) and living adult (Fig. 6). It has also been An earlier paper (Cock 2008) described two life his- reared from Myrcia tomentosa (Myrtaceae) in Trinidad tories in the Pyrrhopygini (Pyrginae). Here, I document (S. Alston-Smith in Beccaloni et al. 2008). partial life histories of some Trinidad species of several genera in the subfamily Eudaminae (Warren et al. 2009), which were either unknown, or could not be illustrated in the earlier parts (Cock 1984, 1986). Further papers will follow. I hope they will encour- age Field Naturalists to seek out and document the early stages of other species, as yet unknown from the island. I recently published a full description of the methods that I used to rear and document skipper life-histories, which may provide useful advice as to how to go about this (Cock 2010). Phocides polybius polybius (Fabricius) Figs. 1-6. This species in Trinidad was treated in Cock (1984). Mielke (2004) follows Evans (1952) in recognising three subspecies: nominate polybius from Panama to the Gui- anas, ssp. lilea (Reakirt) from Central America, and ssp. Fig. 1. Leaf shelters of Phocides polybius polybius on guava tree of 1m, St. Benedict’s, 2 May, 1995; 95/8. 1 2 Living World, J. Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club, 2014 Fig. 2. Instar n-2 caterpillar of Phocides polybius polybius col- lected on guava, St. Benedict’s, 12 October, 1993; 95/8. Fig. 5. Pupa of Phocides polybius polybius collected as cater- pillar on guava, St. Benedict’s, 12 October, 1993; pupated 14 November; photographed 16 November; emerged 7 Decem- ber; 93/13.