Phocides lilea (Reakirt, [1867])

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 : 27

Phocides lilea (Reakirt, [1867]) is a species distinct from Phocides polybius (Fabricius, 1793)

A tree constructed from protein-coding regions of their nuclear genomes reveals that specimens of Phocides polybius (Fabricius, 1793) (type locality "Indiis", likely Suriname) partition into two distinct clades ( Fig. 23). One of the clades consists of Phocides polybius lilea

(Reakirt, [1867]) (type locality

Mexico: Veracruz, Fig. 23 red). The other clade includes all other taxa of this species ( Fig. 23 blue). Fst/Gmin statistics for the Z chromosome comparison of these two clades are

0.39/0.021, suggesting that they represent two distinct species.

Moreover, COI barcodes of lilea from Mexico and polybius from Guyana show 3% (20 bp) difference. Therefore, we conclude that Phocides lilea (Reakirt, [1867]) is a species-level taxon, reinstated status. Furthermore, we sequenced the only known syntype of an enigmatic taxon Erycides imbreus Plötz, 1879 from the ZMHB collection, illustrated in Warren et al. (2016). This specimen is a syntype because it is a uniquely patterned specimen that carries appropriate labels, agrees with the original description and looks similar to the unpublished Godman copy of the Plötz illustration (in BMNH, inspected by NVG) ( Godman 1907). It is an unusual specimen lacking an orange bar in the forewing discal cell (usually extending to costa) typical for P. polybius . Evans (1952) treated this name as a distinct species Phocides imbreus Plötz, 1879 based on a rather poor illustration of this specimen in Draudt (1921) —it is unlikely that Evans saw the actual specimen. Mielke & Casagrande (2002) inspected the syntype and synonymized the name with P. polybius lilea due to general phenotypic similarity and the lack of orange coloring on the fringe around the hindwing tornus. According to our genomic results ( Fig. 23), imbreus is confidently placed with Phocides polybius polybius , revised placement of a synonym, and is probably an aberrant specimen of polybius , not lilea , lacking any orange coloration on its wings, not just on the fringe, but also a forewing orange bar. However, the head of the syntype retains the usual orange patterns including orange palpi and cheeks. Our revised synonymy is further supported by the label data on the specimen stating "Am. m.", which probably stands for America meridionalis (South America), where P. lilea is not known to occur.