Ajenorix Grishin

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2025, Advancing butterfly systematics through genomic analysis, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 12 (5), pp. 1-201 : 30-31

Ajenorix Grishin , new genus

http://zoobank.org/ 5E009C8E-3D24-44C7-BE28-D1772045AC3E

Type species. Rapala hypargyria Elwes, 1893 .

Definition. Genomic phylogeny reveals that several species placed in Deudorix Hewitson, 1863 (type species Dipsas epijarbas F. Moore, 1858 ) are not monophyletic with it and instead form a clade sister to several other genera, such as Bindahara F. Moore, 1881 (type species Hesperia phocides Fabricius, 1793 ) and Capys Hewitson, 1865 (type species Papilio alpheus Cramer, 1777 ), among others ( Fig. 24 red), and, therefore, this clade corresponds to a new genus. This new genus differs from its relatives by having unusual for the group ventral wing patterns, i.e., instead of the typical grayish brown ground color with slightly darker bands framed with white lines separated into spots, species of the new genus are pearly gray with round brown spots, or creamy white with brown margins but without discal or postdiscal brown bands. In DNA, a combination of the following characters is diagnostic in the nuclear genome: cce2070. 17.4:C477T, cce303125.12.1:A1164T, cce303125.12.1:T1191A, cce8301.4.10:A198G, cce8301.4.10:A243G; and COI barcode: A22T, A46T, A298T, A316T, A370T.

Etymology. In Spanish, deudo means relative, and ajeno means outsider, stranger, alien, or not-fitting, reflecting that this new genus does not fit within Deudorix : Ajeno + [Deudo] rix. According to the genomic phylogeny, this genus is an “outsider”—that is, sister to the rest of the clade. The name is a feminine noun in the nominative singular.

Species included. The type species (i.e., Rapala hypargyria Elwes, 1893 ), Deudorix apayao H. Schroeder & Treadaway, 1983 , Deudorix cleora L. Miller & J. Miller, 1986 , Deudorix novellus Yagishita, 2006 , Deudorix philippinensis H. Schröder, Treadaway & Hayashi, 1981 , and Deudorix toxopeusi Tennent , C. Müller & Rawlins, 2010.

Parent taxon. Tribe Deudorigini Doherty, 1886 .

Figures

Fig. 24. Phylogenetic trees of selected Lycaenidae species constructed from protein-coding regions in: a) the nuclear genome (autosomes), based on 447,723 positions, and b) the mitochondrial genome; and c) a BioNJ (Gascuel 1997) dendrogram constructed from COI barcodes using the phylogeny.fr server (Dereeper et al. 2008). Different genera are colored differently: Ajenorix gen. n. (red), Bindahara (gray), Artipe (olive), Virachola stat. rest. (green with subgenus Crates subgen. n. in brown), Capys (purple with subgenus Afrix subgen. n. in magenta), Deudorix (blue with subgenus Wacus subgen. n. in dark blue), and Pilodeudorix (cyan with Pilodeudorix batikelides comb. nov. labeled in orange). Ultrafast bootstrap (Minh et al. 2013) values are shown in (a) and (b), and regular bootstrap values (as fractions) from 100 replicates are shown in (c). In the COI barcode dendrogram (c), species are added from the BOLD database (Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007) (identification not checked) and their BOLD Sample ID (not equal to 8 symbols) or GenBank accession (8 symbols starting from a letter) are given. Sequences obtained by us are denoted by the sample ID of 8 symbols starting from a number. Gaps in branches indicate where a vertical slice of the tree was removed to reduce its horizontal dimension (to allow an increase in the font size), i.e., branches with gaps are longer than shown.