Cecropterus albosuffusa (H. Freeman, 1943), 2023

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 : 51-52

Cecropterus albosuffusa (H. Freeman, 1943) and Cecropterus indistinctus (Austin & J. Emmel, 1998) are species distinct from Cecropterus pylades (Scudder, 1870)

Genomic comparison of Cecropterus Herrich-Schäffer, 1869 (type species Cecrops zarex Hübner, 1818 ) reveals close relationship between Cecropterus (Thorybes) pylades (Scudder, 1870) (type locality in USA: Massachusetts) and Cecropterus (Thorybes) drusius (W. H. Edwards, [1884]) (type locality in southern Arizona) that are unified by the presence of costal fold in males ( Evans 1955). We regard them as the C. pylades species group ( Fig. 27). Genomic trees (the Z chromosome and the mitogenome) confirm that C. drusius with its distinctive genitalia ( Fig. 30q) is sister to all others but reveal that the entity currently treated as a single species C. pylades consists of several genetically differentiated clades ( Fig. 27). The Z chromosome ( Fig. 27a) and the mitochondrial genome ( Fig. 27b) trees show identical strongly supported topology between the clades (but not within clades, where the subtrees are comb-like confidence in the results due to this uncommon congruence between nuclear and mitochondrial trees.

The extent of genetic differentiation suggests that the clades within C. pylades represent distinct species ( Cong et al. 2019a). We find that Cecropterus pylades albosuffusa (H. Freeman, 1943) (type locality USA: Texas, Ft. Davis) forms a clade distant from the nominotypical C. pylades with Fst / Gmin of 0.39/0.001 and COI barcode difference of 2.1% (14 bp). Similarly, the westernmost Cecropterus pylades indistinctus (Austin & J. Emmel, 1998) (type locality in USA: California: San Diego Co.) is separated from the nominotypical C. pylades with Fst / Gmin of 0.41/0.002 and COI barcode difference of 1.7% (11 bp). Therefore, we propose treating Cecropterus (Thorybes) albosuffusa (H. Freeman, 1943) , stat. nov. and Cecropterus (Thorybes) indistinctus (Austin & J. Emmel, 1998) , stat. nov. as species-level taxa, not subspecies of C. pylades . Hence, no subspecies are recognized in the C. pylades species group. Furthermore, three additional clades with strong genetic differentiation do not have names and represent new species. These three new species are described below. Finally, we note that the speciation scenario in the “crown” subgroup of the C. pylades group consisting of four USA species: Floridian, eastern, westcoastal, and central ( Fig. 27 red, green, cyan, and purple) parallels that of the Erynnis brizo (Boisduval & Le Conte, [1837]) species group as laid out by Burns (2020).