Pyrgus centaureae dzekh Gorbunov, 2007

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Opler, Paul A. & Grishin, Nick V., 2021, Genomics-guided refinement of butterfly taxonomy, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 9 (3), pp. 1-55 : 48

Pyrgus centaureae dzekh Gorbunov, 2007 is a new subspecies for North America

The genomic tree of Pyrgus centaureae (Rambur, 1839) (type locality Sweden) taxa reveals that a specimen collected by J. L. Harry west of Galbraith

Lake around Dalton Hwy mi. 274 in Alaska is not monophyletic with North American populations, but instead belongs to the Old World lineage (Fig. 53) .

Therefore, it is not Pyrgus centaureae freija (B.

Warren, 1924) (type locality Labrador), but Pyrgus Fig. 53. Pyrgus centaureae : Palearctic lineage (blue) centaureae dzekh Gorbunov, 2007 (type locality and Nearctic lineage (magenta).

Russia: Chukotka). Hence, we add this subspecies to North American fauna. The tree reveals partitioning of P. centaureae into two clades: mostly Palearctic lineage (Fig. 53 blue) and Nearctic lineage (Fig. 53 magenta). However, COI barcodes of specimens from different lineages (e.g. Sweden vs. USA: WV) differ by only 0.15% (1 bp) and Fst/Gmin statistics of the two lineages are 0.21/0.08, suggesting rather limited genetic differentiation and continuing gene exchange between them. On the basis of statistics from this small sample of specimens we sequenced, we cannot yet support the two lineages as distinct species, and the Nearctic assemblage of subspecies may be conceptualized as a semi-species instead.