Pholisora crestar J. Scott & Davenport, 2017

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 : 30

Pholisora crestar J. Scott & Davenport, 2017 is a species distinct from Pholisora catullus (Fabricius, 1793)

Recently described as a subspecies on the basis of wing pattern differences ( Scott et al. 2017), Pholisora catullus crestar J. Scott & Davenport, 2017 (type locality USA: California, Tulare Co. ) was synonymized with Pholisora catullus (Fabricius, 1793)

( type locality " Indiis ", likely eastern US)

by Pelham (2020). As a part of on-going genomic sequencing inventory of the primary type specimens of Hesperiidae ,

we obtained and analyzed whole genome shotgun reads of the holotype and two paratypes of crestar . Surprisingly, their comparison with P. catullus populations from several distant localities revealed prominent genetic differentiation (Fig. 28). Moreover, one of the crestar paratypes (from CA: Mono Co., NVG-17066H12, Fig. 28) apparently is P. catullus , not crestar . Fst/Gmin statistics for the crestar / catullus comparison are 0.34/0.014, suggesting distinctness of crestar as a species. Gene exchange between catullus and crestar (0.014) is very low (for conspecific populations it is typically above 0.1), strongly supporting reproductive isolation between these taxa. Peculiarities of COI barcode evolution in Pholisora have been reported previously by Pfeiler (2018) and COI barcodes of the crestar holotype and the catullus specimen from Texas (NVG-3990) differ by 1.7% (11 bp). Due to strong genetic differentiation, we suggest that Pholisora crestar J. Scott & Davenport, 2017 , new status, is a species-level taxon.