Viloria & Costa

ANARTIA

Publicación del Museo de Biología de la Universidad del Zulia

ISSN 1315-642X (impresa) / ISSN 2665-0347 (digital)

hps://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18762825 / Anartia, 41 (diciembre 2025): 40-44

Occurrence of Orotaygetis surui Nakahara, Zacca & Lamas,

2018 in Venezuela (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Satyrinae)

Presencia de Orotaygetis surui Nakahara, Zacca & Lamas, 2018 en Venezuela

(Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Satyrinae)

Ángel L. Viloria1,2 & Mauro Costa3

1Centro de Ecología, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), km 11 carretera Panamericana,

Altos de Pipe, edo. Miranda 1204, Venezuela.

2Coordinação de Ciência, Tecnología e Educação, Secretaría Permanente, Organização do Tratado de Cooperação Amazônica (OTCA),

SEPN 510, Bloco A, 3° Andar, Asa Norte, Brasilia DF, CEP 70750-521, Brasil.

3Museo del Instituto de Zoología Agrícola, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Maracay, edo. Aragua, Venezuela.

Correspondence: sebastianviloriacarrizo@gmail.com

(Received: 10-09-2025 / Accepted: 26-12-2025 / On line: 31-12-2025)

nes Cientícas, IVIC / Museo del Instituto de Zoología

Agrícola de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, MIZA),

Mr.Hernando Camico, who ascended this remote moun-

tain range on foot, following the Taboca Route, one of

three trails —two on the Venezuelan side— that lead to

illegal gold mines near the summits. e journey requires

a river approach, navigating in a bongo from San Carlos de

Río Negro, going up the Negro, Casiquiare and Pacimoni

rivers, and nally the Baría, on whose southern bank is lo-

cated the Puerto de Los Mineros, the last station for the

boats. Two routes of ascent on foot depart from here, the

Camello Route, which goes into the heart of the mountain

range, and the Taboca, at whose intermediate point (Bar-

riga Shella Camp) the Orotaygetis butteries were found.

e Serranía de La Neblina (Fig. 4), in the southern-

most tip of Venezuela, bordering Brazil, is one of the least

known national mountain ranges in terms of its lepi-

dopteran fauna. Very few scientic expeditions have been

carried out in this region due to the diculties of access.

Undoubtedly, the most important was the multidisci-

plinary international expedition, organized, sponsored,

and carried out by FUDECI in 1983–1987 (Brewer

Carías 1988), which had valuable logistical support from

several institutions, including air and river transport. It is

very dicult, without the use of helicopters, to reach the

Orotaygetis Nakahara & Zacca (in Nakahara et al.

2018) is a monobasic genus of satyrine butteries native

to the Amazon biome in South America. e most re-

cent and complete phylogeny of the subtribe Euptychiina

clearly shows its genetic anity with Taygetina Forster,

1964 (Espeland et al. 2023), but its external appearance

can be confused with that of a species of Harjesia Forster,

1964 (Lamas 2004: 220), a genus from which it diverges

signicantly in genetics and morphological structure. e

only known species within this genus, Orotaygetis surui

Nakahara, Zacca & Lamas (2018: 11-12), was apparently

discovered in the forests of the upper Arinos River in the

state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, about y years ago. Until

now it was known from only 28 individuals examined in

collections, all from low to medium altitudes, in the south

and southwest of the Amazon basin (300-972 m asl; Na-

kahara et al. 2018).

In this note, we report the discovery in Venezuela of

two male individuals of Orotaygetis surui (Fig. 1, data and

repositories in the legend), from a locality in the Serranía

de La Neblina, very close to the border with Brazil (Fig.4).

e specimens were captured along a trail cut through

pristine montane forest at 900 m asl, in January 2023, by a

Piaroa student and collaborator in our Lepidoptera of the

Pantepui Project (Instituto Venezolano de Investigacio-

Orotaygetis in Venezuela

summits of this range, among which Pico de La Neblina

stands out, on the binational borderline. Its summit at

2,995 m asl represents the highest point in Brazil and the

entire Guiana Shield.

In a summary of buttery studies in the Pantepui re-

gion, Viloria & Costa (2019) presented a list of endemic

Pantepui taxa, several of which correspond to higher alti-

tudes of the Serranía de La Neblina: Pereute lindemannae

lindemannae, Lieinix christa christa, Dismorphia crisia

neblina Reissinger (1970, Pieridae), Pedaliodes demarm-

elsi Viloria (1995, Nymphalidae, Satyrinae), Greta clavi-

joi, Pteronymia alissa marjorieae, Pteronymia alicia Neild

(2008, Nymphalidae, Danainae, Ithomiini), Eutresis hy-

pereia imeriensis Brown (1977a, Nymphalidae, Danainae,

Ithomiini) and Melinaea mnasias neblinae Brown (1977b,

Nymphalidae, Danainae, Ithomiini). Pedaliodes chaconi

Viloria (1998, Nymphalidae, Satyrinae) was described

and, so far, has been known exclusively from the Serranía

de Tapirapecó, a mountain range running continuously

east-northeast from La Neblina. ese faunal elements,

chiey those with strictly montane habits, appear to have

more anities with the Andean fauna than with the but-

tery genera that characterize the rainforests of the Ama-

zonian plains. is also seems to be the case for Orotaygetis.

It is noteworthy that the previous geographical records

of Orotaygetis surui come from sites very distant from the

locality reported in this work, primarily in the south and

southeast of the Amazon River basin, including the An-

dean foothills or mountains (Cuzco and Madre de Dios,

in Peru) and slopes of some elevation in the headwaters of

Figure 1. Orotaygetis surui Nakahara, Zacca & Lamas, 2018, new record for Venezuela. A (dorsal), B (ventral): ♂ VENEZUELA,

Amazonas, Sierra de la Neblina, Ruta Taboca, 900 m, 13-I-2023. Leg. H. Camico (IVIC); C (dorsal), B (ventral): ♂ dorsal: same data

except 18-I-2023 (MIZA) (photos & plate: M. Costa).

Viloria & Costa

Figure 2. Barriga Shella Camp, Taboca Route, Serranía de La Neblina, Amazonas State, Venezuela (photo: H. Camico).

Figure 3. Forest habitat of Orotaygetis surui in the Taboca Route, 900 m, Venezuelan side of the Serranía de La Neblina (photo:

H.Camico).

Orotaygetis in Venezuela

several of the Amazon river tributaries in Rondônia and

Mato Grosso (Brazil) (Nakahara et al. 2018: 38, g.16

distribution map of O. surui). On the other hand, inter-

mediate regions in the vast Amazonian plain, from where

many buttery species are known, do not appear to be part

of the natural distribution of this peculiar taxon.

erefore, it is reasonable to conclude that O. surui

is truly absent from the lowland rainforests of the Ama-

zon and that it is a species typical of mid-altitudes on the

edges of the Amazon basin. Its distribution, herein hypo-

thetically inferred from ve points in the map, could be

described as amphi-Amazonian or perhaps circum-Ama-

zonian. is is neither a frequent nor a random pattern of

geographic distribution. It is still too early to speculate on

this matter; however, this pattern is likely to be repeated

not only by other buttery species but also in plants. A

comparative analysis of multiple biogeographical evidence

may, in this case, rule out the classic dispersal-isolation-

vicariance model proposed for Andean butteries (Adams

1977, 1985), and instead align favorably with the mecha-

nism of passive upli of montane biotas (Heads 2017,

2019; Heads et al. in press).

Other Satyrinae species collected on the Taboca Route,

between 400 and 1,000 m altitude, were Bia actorion ssp.

nov., Pierella astyoche bernhardina Bryk, 1953, Pierella la-

mia (Sulzer, 1776), Taygetis laches (Fabricius, 1793) and

Zischkaia josti Nakahara & Kleckner, 2020 (specimens

deposited at IVIC). It is worth noting that very few speci-

mens of satyrine butteries are known from remote loca-

tions in the far south of the Venezuelan state of Amazonas.

Lichy ([1984]) identied 45 species of Satyrinae (includ-

ing six species of Brassolini and six of Morphini) collected

in 1951 during the Franco-Venezuelan Expedition to the

sources of the Orinoco River (Grelier 1954, Anduze 1960,

Rísquez Iribarren 1962, Lichy 1979). e highest collect-

ing points recorded by René Lichy during that memorable

Figure 4. Relative location of the new nd of Orotaygetis surui in the northern Amazon region. e broad map depicts the northern

part of South America. e yellow dashed line in the lower right enlargement represents the Taboca Route, one of the two pathways

(in Venezuelanterritory) to ascend Pico La Neblina on foot; thered circle indicates Barriga Shella Camp (900 m asl), where the two

specimens were found.

Viloria & Costa

expedition was at 300 m (conuence of the Orinoco and

Ugueto rivers), while some Satyrinae species cited by him

correspond only to two higher locations reached by Pablo

J. Anduze (La Cumbre, at 470m, and Horqueta-Minas,

at 530 m). With the exception of O. surui and Z. josti,

which were only more recently detected, Lichy cited for

the upper Orinoco all the satyrids mentioned above for

the Taboca Route.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

e authors thank Hernando Camico and his wife

Keyla Arana (Raudal del Danto) for organizing and con-

ducting two scientic expeditions to the Serranía de La

Neblina. ey also thank Pedro Maquirino of the IVIC

Field Station in San Carlos de Río Negro for his collabora-

tion and support to the aforementioned expeditions. John

R. Grehan (Ngaio, New Zealand) brought interesting bio-

geographic issues to our attention and provided essential

bibliography on passive upli of montane biotas. Gilson

Rivas, María Eugenia Andara, and Neva Mora (Maracai-

bo) handled the editorial process for this note.

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