Wallengrenia Berg, 1897

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 : 49

Wallengrenia Berg, 1897 is a subgenus of Polites Scudder, 1872

We sequenced all major phenotypically distinct taxa from the Hylephila Billberg, 1820 (type species Papilio phyleus Drury, 1773 ) group of genera (Fig. 54, rooted with Hesperia

Fabricius, 1793). Confirming our previous assessment ( Zhang et al.

2019c), we see that Polites Scudder,

1872 (type species Hesperia peckius

W. Kirby, 1837) is genetically close to

Wallengrenia Berg, 1897 (type species Hesperia premnas

Wallengren, 1860) and is not separated from it by a long internal branch (Fig. 54). Both branches that are labeled " Polites " in Fig. 54 are longer than the branch between them and therefore assigning a taxonomic rank to them seems more appropriate than to the shorter branch between them. Moreover, COI barcodes of W. otho and P. peckius differ by 5.2% (34bp) further confirming their close relationship. Therefore, we propose treating Wallengrenia Berg, 1897 as a subgenus of Polites Scudder, 1872 . The resulting classification of the Hylephila Billberg, 1820 (type species Papilio phyleus Drury, 1773 ) group is marked on the tree rooted with Hesperia comma (Linnaeus, 1758) (Fig. 54). Hylephila is sister to all others in the group. Then, there are two major levels in the tree. First, the genus Polites that includes Wallengrenia originates at about the same level as other three genera in the group: Pompeius Evans, 1955 (type species Hesperia pompeius Latreille, [1824] ), Hedone Scudder, 1872 (type species Hesperia brettus Boisduval & Le Conte, [1837] , a junior subjective synonym of Thymelicus vibex Geyer, 1832 ), and Limochores Scudder, 1872 (type species Hesperia manataaqua Scudder, 1863 , which is a junior subjective synonym of Hesperia origenes Fabricius, 1793 ). This diversification event dates to about 15 Mya ( Zhang et al. 2019d) and therefore corresponds to genera. Second, Polites diversifies into 4 prominent lineages: Polites , Yvretta Hemming, 1935 Coa Grishin, 2019 and Wallengrenia Berg, 1897 . This more recent diversification (~10 Mya) corresponds to subgenera.