Abananote Potts, 1943

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 : 46-47

Abananote Potts, 1943 and Altinote Potts, 1943 are junior subjective synonyms of Actinote Hübner, [1819]

In agreement with previous studies ( Silva-Brandao et al. 2008; Carvalho et al. 2020), we find that genera Actinote Hübner, [1819] (type species Papilio thalia Linnaeus, 1758 ), Abananote Potts, 1943 (type species Acraea abana Hewitson, 1868 ) and Altinote Potts, 1943 (type species Heliconius neleus Latreille, [1813] ) are closely related and some of them are not monophyletic as currently circumscribed ( Fig. 49). The type species of Abananote and Altinote are quite closely related: e.g. their COI barcodes differ by 6.4%

(42 bp), the same divergence as between the two former subspecies of Phystis simois (see above), and therefore are congeneric. The Actinote clade is separated from them by a prominent gap ( Carvalho et al. 2020), and the barcodes of A. thalia and A. neleus differ by 8.5% (56

bp), which would suggest their attribution to different subgenera. However, species phylogeny is at odds with intuitive phenotypic assessment ( Lamas 2004): there is an additional third clade unexpected from phenotypes ( Silva-Brandao et al. 2008; Carvalho et al. 2020). Therefore, until these inconsistencies between phenotypic and genetic classifications of this group are sorted out, we propose placing Abananote Potts, 1943 and Altinote Potts, 1943 as junior subjective synonyms of Actinote Hübner, [1819] . This treatment is consistent with the unified, and more genetically diverse, Old World genus Telchinia Hübner, [1819] (type species Papilio serena Fabricius, 1775 ) that is sister to Actinote sensu lato ( Fig. 49).