Delias narses/Delias brandti confusion.

[nomad]

I was surprised when looking through my plates of the Butterflies of papua New Guinea, that Parsons on plate 38 figured a male of Delias narses but the female of that species was actually Delias brandti. I understand that the specimen he figured of D. brandti was labelled as D. narses in the Canberra collection and that it was caught by W. Brandt in 1959 and not Sir Edward Hallstrom as suggested on the Delias website. Hallstrom bankrolled W. Brandt as a collector and insisted that his name appeared on the data labels, although he actually did not catch any of the specimens himself. Parsons also seems to give the wrong locality for D. Brandti in New Ireland, the Lelet plateau and not the Schleinitz Mountains where it is actually found. I know that D. Brandti  was not recognized as a new species until Muller found it several years ago, but certainly not a recent discovery just mislabeled in a National collection. I can only assume that the true female of Delias narses was not at Canberra. 

[wollastoni]

Yes Parsons' book has been published 3 years before the description of brandti by Muller.

It is very common than new published taxa have been already collected and overlooked by previous entomologists.
Only Delias specialists see the difference between narses and brandti, others may think about variations, male/female, and so on. Especially when there are only few specimens in the collection of reference. (I guess there were only 1 or 2 brandti in the Canberra coll.).

Even in your collection Peter, there may be a different taxon, waiting for its publication !

Today with internet, it would be fast to create a good reference serie of brandti, putting together the few known specimens.