Microtia H. Bates, 1864

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 : 43

are junior subjective synonyms of Microtia H. Bates, 1864

Microtia H. Bates, 1864 (type and the only species Microtia elva H. Bates, 1864 ), Dymasia Higgins, 1960 (type and the only species Melitaea dymas W. H. Edwards, 1877 ) and Texola Higgins, 1959 (type species Eresia elada Hewitson, 1868 ) cluster closely in the genomic tree (Fig. 45). Our result agrees with the previous assessment based on gene markers ( Wahlberg et al. 2005; Wahlberg and Freitas 2007; Long et al. 2014) and morphological study by Kons (2000), who already synonymized Texola and Dymasia with Microtia , a suggestion cited by Wahlberg et al. (2005) five years later but not followed either in that work ( Wahlberg et al. 2005) or in subsequent publications ( Pelham 2008; Long et al. 2014) and many on-line resources ( Warren et al. 2016; North American Butterfly Association 2018; Wahlberg 2019a; Pelham 2020). Finally, more than two decades after these studies, we reach the same conclusion on a much larger DNA dataset: Texola Higgins, 1959 and Dymasia Higgins, 1960 are junior subjective synonyms of Microtia H. Bates, 1864 . A curious observation is that Microtia [= Texola ] coracara (Dyar, 1912) appears to be more distant from other Texola than Dymasia from Microtia (Fig. 45), further supporting unification of these species. The unification is a more meaningful solution, because this clade actually consists of four semi-equal lineages, which are (1) M. elada (Hewitson, 1868) species group; (2) M. anomalus (Godman & Salvin, 1897) species group that includes M. coracara ; (3) M. dymas ; and (4) M. elva ; rather than the traditional three ( Texola , Dymasia and Microtia ). An alternative could be to split the group into these 4, rather than 3, evolutionary lineages, but each of these 4 groups is nearly monotypic (or monotypic under some species concepts) and is a species group rather than a genus or even subgenus. Finally, Microtia sensu lato is characterized by an elevated evolutionary rate compared to its sister Chlosyne Butler, 1870 (type species Papilio janais Drury, 1782 ): in Fig. 45, branches of Microtia (green) are longer (i.e., stick out to the right more) than branches of Chlosyne (black). This elevated rate may be behind more pronounced phenotypic differences between Microtia species compared to Chlosyne that resulted in the oversplit classification of Microtia into genera.