Immature stages, population ecology and natural history of the genus Carminda Ebert & Dias (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae)

ABSTRACT There are numerous studies describing Lepidoptera immatures, some of which have also contributed to phylogenetic studies. However, most studies still focus, almost exclusively, on the description of size, shape and color of the immatures, with few of them providing an in-depth morphological study using chaetotaxy and/or ultrastructure analysis, even phylogenetic studies. Currently, the genus Carminda is composed of four species distributed in the southern and southeastern regions of Brazil, in addition to Paraguay and Argentina, namely: C. paeon (Godart, [1824]), C. griseldis (Weymer, 1911), C. umuarama Ebert and Dias, 1997 and C. surpresa Barbosa, Aguiar, Rosa, Zacca & Freitas, 2020. The genus Carminda is part of the ‘Megisto clade’, as sister to the large genus Yphthimoides Forster, 1964. In the present study, the immature stages of C. paeon, C. griseldis and C. umuarama are reported for the first time, and complementary information on the chaetotaxy and ultrastructural morphology of the recently described species C. surpresa is also provided. Information on habitat, population ecology and natural history are also presented, as well as data on the population ecology of C. paeon and C. griseldis. The immature stages of Carminda are compared to each other and to other related species of Euptychiina.