Eurema flavescens (Chavannes, 1850)

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2024, Taxonomic advances driven by the genomic analysis of butterflies, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 11 (7), pp. 1-43 : 5

Eurema flavescens (Chavannes, 1850) is a species distinct from Eurema elathea (Cramer, 1777)

Genomic analysis reveals that Terias flavescens Chavannes, 1850 ( type locality in Brazil: São Paulo) ( Fig. 3 magenta), currently regarded as a subspecies of Eurema elathea (Cramer, 1777) ( type locality in “Virginia”, possibly Haiti) ( Fig. 3 green) is genetically differentiated from it at the species level, e.g., their COI barcodes differ by 2.9% (19 bp). Therefore, we propose that Eurema flavescens (Chavannes, 1850) , stat. rest. is a species distinct from Eurema elathea (Cramer, 1777) . Out of all other subspecies of E. elathea , Terias elathea obsoleta Jörgensen, 1932 ( type locality in Paraguay) is closely related to E. flavescens , while others remain with E. elathea ( Fig. 3). Thus, we additionally propose a new species-subspecies combination Eurema flavescens obsoleta (Jörgensen, 1932) .