Eurema

Leong, Jing V., Matos-Maraví, Pável, Núñez, Rayner, Nunes, Renato, Liang, Weijun, Braby, Michael F., Doleck, Tenzing, Aduse-Poku, Kwaku, Inayoshi, Yutaka, Hsu, Yu-Feng, Wahlberg, Niklas, Peggie, Djunijanti, Mohagan, Alma B., Mohagan, Dave P., Genaro, Julio A., Perez-Asso, Antonio R., Kunte, Krushnamegh, Martins, Dino J., Sáfián, Szabolcs, Kawahara, Akito Y., Pierce, Naomi E. & Lohman, David J., 2025, Around the World in 26 Million Years: Diversification and Biogeography of Pantropical Grass-Yellow Eurema Butterflies (Pieridae: Coliadinae), Journal of Biogeography (e 15107) 52 (5), pp. 1-16 : 10

4.3 | Taxonomy of Eurema sensu lato

Numerous attempts over the past century to revise this genus using external features, including genitalia, male sex brands, wing colour and wing pattern, have not solidified the nomenclature. Identification of species in this group is difficult, and morphological similarity between non-sister taxa is high. For instance, wing markings in the widespread species E. hecabe vary markedly with season ( Kato 2000; Yata 1989), and prior molecular phylogenetic studies have demonstrated that Eurema is not monophyletic with respect to taxa previously recognised to be in the genera Abaeis, Pyrisitia , Teriocolias and Leucidia ( Braby et al. 2006; Wahlberg et al. 2014), indicating that these genera are not well defined. The last detailed taxonomic revision of New World Eurema and related grass-yellow genera by Klots (1931 [1933]) noted the difficulty of distinguishing Leucidia from Eurema . Genitalia in Leucidia are quite similar to some Eurema species, which caused Braby (2005) to suggest that Leucidia may be a sister taxon to Eurema . Although the type species of the genus, Eurema daira (Godart, 1819) , was described from the United States, the alpha taxonomy of Eurema has been best studied in the Old World by Yata (1989, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995). Braby (2005) proposed two solutions to resolve the taxonomy of Eurema : (1) to raise the Old World subgenus Terias to generic status and recognise multiple genera or (2) to recognise a single genus Eurema sensu lato and treat Abaeis, Pyrisitia , Teriocolias and Leucidia all as subgenera of Eurema . However, given the topology of the tree that we recovered, solution (1) would still leave Eurema paraphyletic. Thus, we recognise a single genus with two subgenera as follows.