Plesioarida, Trujano & Garcia, 2018

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 : 14-16

Plesioarida Trujano & García, 2018 is a junior subjective synonym of Roeberella Strand, 1932

Plesioarida Trujano & García, 2018 (type species Apodemia walkeri Godman & Salvin, 1886 ) was described as a genus ( Trujano-Ortega et al. 2018) and was treated as a subgenus of Apodemia C. Felder & R. Felder , Mexico: Chihuahua) is strong in the protein coding regions of the entire nuclear genome, Z-chromosome and mitochondrial genome: 100% of all segment trees contained the clade of these three species. Such a result was unexpected, because the type species of Roeberella (South American) was not previously compared with Apodemia (North American), and we suspected a possibility of error or contamination. However, COI barcodes of R. calvus and A. walkeri differ by only 5.2% (34 base pairs), a difference smaller than that between A. walkeri and A. mormo (8.5%, 56 bp). Moreover, R. calvus is phenotypically similar to Plesioarida species ( Fig. 8) and shares a falcate forewing with Apodemia hypoglauca (Godman & Salvin, 1878) (type locality " Mexico "). The similarities are most prominent in the ventral wing pattern ( Fig. 8 bc bottom). Interestingly, the wing shape of R. calvus appears more like that of female Plesioarida ( Fig. 8b). Dorsally, R. calvus reminds us of an aberrant Plesioarida . Therefore, due to genetic and phenotypic similarities, we conclude that Plesioarida syn. n. is a junior subjective synonym of Roeberella , and consequently we place Roeberella as a subgenus (new status) of Apodemia .

We think this find is particularly interesting for several reasons. First, it extends the range of Apodemia , previously not recorded from South America, to Peru, with all evolutionary and biogeographical implications of this fact. Second, it underscores the importance of a more comprehensive phylogenetic analysis before proposing new genus-group names to avoid creation of unnecessary synonyms ( Trujano-Ortega et al. 2018; Trujano-Ortega et al. 2020). Third, it reiterates the power of genomic approaches and the value of the type concept, both in species and genus-group names. Sequencing of the syntype of the type species of the genus-group name Roeberella solidifies our conclusions, eliminating a possibility of misidentification or incorrect inference from a non-type species.