Spindasis Wallengren, 1857

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2023, Butterfly classification and species discovery using genomics, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 11 (3), pp. 1-94 : 34

Spindasis Wallengren, 1857 is a subgenus of Cigaritis Donzel, 1848

Phylogenetic analysis of Aphnaeinae Distant, 1884 revealed that the genus Cigaritis Donzel, 1848 (type species Cigaritis zohra Donzel, 1848 ) splits into two prominent clades: mostly Oriental (hindwing tornal lobe not well developed or lacking, at least one hindwing tail short, <2 mm) and African (hindwing tornal lobe well developed, both hindwing tails long) ( Riley 1925) with genetic differentiation between them similar to that of the two subgenera in Chrysoritis Butler, 1898 (type species Zeritis oreas Trimen, 1891 ) (Boyle et al. 2015) ( Fig. 21). Therefore, the two clades of Cigaritis correspond to subgenera. The (mostly) Oriental clade is the nominal subgenus because the type species of Cigaritis (from NW Africa) belongs to this clade. Two additional genus-group names have type species currently placed in Cigaritis : Spindasis Wallengren, 1857 (type species Spindasis masilikazi Wallengren, 1857 , which is a junior subjective synonym of Aphnaeus natalensis Westwood, [1851] ) and Apharitis Riley, 1925 (type species Polyommatus epargyros Eversmann, 1855 ). The latter is in the Asian clade and, therefore, remains a junior subjective synonym of Cigaritis . The former belongs to the African clade and, therefore, this clade corresponds to the subgenus Spindasis Wallengren, 1857 , stat. rest., which we propose to treat as a valid subgenus instead of a synonym.