Precis tugela

"African leaf butterfly" redirects here. For the other butterfly with this common name, see Kallimoides rumia.

Precis tugela, the African leaf butterfly^[1] or eared commodore, is a butterfly of the family Nymphalidae. It is found in eastern and southern Africa, ranging from Ethiopia to South Africa. It is commonly included in the genus Junonia rather than Precis.

African leaf butterfly
In Adalbert Seitz's Fauna Africana
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Nymphalidae
Genus:	Precis
Species:	P. tugela
Binomial name
Precis tugela Trimen, 1879
Synonyms
Junonia tugela Junonia aurorina Butler, 1894 Junonia pyriformis Butler, 1896

The wingspan is 55–60 mm in males and 58–64 mm in females.^[1]

The larvae feed on Plectranthus species and Englerastrum scandens.

Subspecies

• Precis tugela tugela — eastern Zimbabwe, Eswatini, South Africa: Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal
• Precis tugela aurorina (Butler, 1894) — southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, northern and eastern Tanzania, Malawi
• Precis tugela pyriformis (Butler, 1896) — western Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, north-western Tanzania, northern Zambia, Democratic Republic of the Congo: Kivu, Shaba, Lomami, Lualaba