Argynnis coronis carolae dos Passos & Grey, 1942

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Opler, Paul A. & Grishin, Nick V., 2020, Genomic evidence suggests further changes of butterfly names, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 8 (7), pp. 1-41 : 21

Argynnis coronis carolae dos Passos & Grey, 1942 is a subspecies-level taxon

Described as a subspecies of Argynnis (Speyeria) coronis Behr, 1864 (type locality USA: California, possibly Santa Clara Co.), Argynnis coronis carolae dos Passos & Grey, 1942 (type locality USA: Nevada, Clark Co. ) was elevated to species by Emmel and Austin ( Emmel and Austin 1998) due to a number of its unique features, including the isolated locality. Our genomic trees revealed that carolae forms a compact clade consistent with its isolation, however, not separately, but deep within A. coronis , sister to Argynnis coronis hennei Gunder, 1934 (type locality USA: California, Ventura Co. ) and near the nominal A. coronis (Fig. 12 magenta inside blue clade). This placement in the tree is geographically meaningful, but makes it difficult to accept the species status of carolae because it renders coronis nonmonophyletic. Furthermore, Fst/Gmin for carolae vs. coronis are 0.23/0.11. Fst is somewhat elevated due to genetic closeness of individuals within apparently strongly inbred carolae population, but the gene flow between carolae and coronis is more than two times higher than the 0.05 threshold characteristic of different species. The COI barcodes of the A. carolae holotype and A. coronis differ by ~0.5% (3 bp). Therefore, we reinstate this taxon as a subspecies: Argynnis coronis carolae dos Passos & Grey, 1942 .