Phocides batabano (Lucas, 1857)

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 : 47-48

Phocides batabano (Lucas, 1857) and Phocides bicolora (Boddaert, 1783) are species distinct from Phocides pigmalion (Cramer, 1779)

In his key, Evans (1952) stated that uncus flanges in genitalia of continental subspecies of Phocides pigmalion (Cramer, 1779) (type locality Suriname) are as long as the uncus, but are shorter in the island subspecies, being similar to other Phocides Hübner, [1819] (type species Phocides cruentus Hübner, [1819] , which is Hesperia polybius Fabricius, 1793 ). Consistently with this notable genitalic difference, the genomic tree partitions P. pigmalion into several groups (Fig. 51) rendering it paraphyletic with respect to Phocides belus Godman & Salvin, 1893

(type locality Mexico) and Phocides lincea (HerrichSchäffer, 1869) (type locality not stated, probably the Guianas), and suggesting that P. pigmalion is a

Fig. 51. Phocides batabano (red), bicolora (magenta), complex of several species. While the inclusion of pigmalion (blue), lincea (green) and perkinsi (cyan). P. belus in the pigmalion group is expected because

Evans (1952) treated it as a subspecies of P. pigmalion , P. lincea was a surprise. Linked by Evans (1952) with Phocides perkinsi (Kaye, 1931) (type locality Jamaica) as its subspecies that was elevated to species only recently ( Turner and Turland 2017), and placed at the end of Evans' key, P. lincea has not been associated with the pigmalion group before. Our genomic results definitively confirm P. perkinsi (Fig. 51 cyan) as a species-level taxon, because it is far removed from P. lincea (Fig. 51 green). Furthermore, due to genetic and genitalic differences, we reinstate Phocides batabano (Lucas, 1857) (type locality Cuba) and Phocides bicolora (Boddaert, 1783) (type locality not stated, likely Haiti) as species. The COI barcodes of P. batabano and P. bicolora differ by 2% (13 bp), and P. pigmalion (from Ecuador) and P. batabano by 3.3% (22 bp). Wing patterns agree with this partitioning of P. pigmalion as it was defined by Mielke (2005) previously, into at least three species: forewing hyaline spots absent ( P. batabano ), present but narrow and wings green-striped ( P. bicolora ), and present and broader, wings blue-striped ( P. pigmalion ). To accommodate this treatment, we revise species-subspecies combinations as: Phocides batabano okeechobee (Worthington, 1881) and Phocides batabano batabanoides (W. Holland, 1902).