Ceratrichia notata, Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 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 : 74-75

Ceratrichia notata Grishin, new species

http://zoobank.org/ 3BD674EC-B100-4309-8181-393A29D4EE03

Definition and diagnosis. As shown above, Evans misidentified Paronymus punctata Holland, 1896, comb. nov. The distinctive species he considered “ Ceratrichia punctata ” does not have a name and is new. This new species keys to 31.A.(b)(b 2)(a 3) in Evans (1937) and is identified by a combination of brown dorsal forewing with white dots, single (upper) dot in discal cell, ventrally with pale-yellow area by inner margin; most of dorsal hindwing is yellow with costal third brown, ventrally pale yellow, not white, broadly brown at the outer margin and with submarginal dots encircled with brown, such dot in the discal cell, and (frequently replaced with brown spots) 3–4 additional dots around.

Type material. Holotype: ♂ deposited in the African Butterfly Research Institute , Nairobi , Kenya [ ABRI], collected in Central African Republic: Zomea, Oct-1982, ABRI-2019-2412, and its photographs can be found in Williams (2023a), as the male “ Ceratrichia punctata ” (misidentification) . Paratypes: 2♂♂ 2♀♀: 1♀ with the same data as the holotype but Sep-1996 and ABRI-2019-2413; others in BMNH : 1♂ 1♀ from Cameroon and 1♂ from Angola .

Type locality. Central African Republic: Zomea .

Etymology. This species was previously misidentified as “ punctata ”, which means “dotted” in Latin. A Latin synonym of “punctata ” is “notata ”, which is adopted as the name of this species. The name “notata ” can also be translated as “noted”, and this species is noted for its larger white dots and bright colors and for the confusion about its name due to misidentification that genomic analysis of primary type specimens helped to resolve. The name is a feminine adjective.

Distribution. Western Africa, recorded from Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Angola.

are species distinct from Paronymus semilutea (Mabille, 1891)

Genomic trees reveal that sister taxa Ceratrichia indeterminabilis Strand, 1912 (type locality Equatorial Guinea [not Cameroon!]: Benito [river] area, Monte Alen, syntypes sequenced as NVG-18073A07 and NVG-18073A08) and Ceratricula semilutea congdoni Larsen, 2013 (type locality in Uganda) prior to this publication treated as subspecies of Ceratricula semilutea (Mabille, 1891) (type locality Nigeria: Lagos, syntype sequenced as NVG-21118G05) that we placed in Paronymus Aurivillius, 1925 (type species Hesperia ligora Hewitson, 1876 ) (see above), are not monophyletic with C. semilutea ( Figs. 45, 46) and are well differentiated from it genetically with COI barcode difference of 3.0% (20 bp) and 3.6% (24 bp), respectively, and from each other of 3.3% (22 bp). Therefore, we propose to treat them as species-level taxa: Paronymus indeterminabilis (Strand, 1912) , stat. rest. and Paronymus congdoni (Larsen, 2013) , stat. nov.