Parnassius smintheus var. niger W. G. Wright, 1905

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2023, Genomic analysis reveals new species and subspecies of butterflies, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 11 (6), pp. 1-63 : 5

Parnassius smintheus var. niger W. G. Wright, 1905 is a junior subjective synonym of Parnassius smintheus smintheus E. Doubleday, 1847 and not of Parnassius smintheus behrii W. H. Edwards, 1870

Genomic analysis of the holotype of Parnassius smintheus var. niger W. G. Wright, 1905 (type locality USA: California, Sierra Co. Donner Summit, but no locality label on the holotype, sequenced as NVG-22098G08) ( Fig. 1 red, highlighted yellow) currently treated as a junior subjective synonym of Parnassius smintheus behrii W. H. Edwards, 1870 (type locality USA: California, Tioga Pass) is not monophyletic with it ( Fig. 1 magenta) and is instead in the clade with more eastern subspecies of Parnassius smintheus E. Doubleday, 1847 (type locality in “Rocky Mountains,” possibly Canada: Alberta, vicinity of Rock Lake) ( Fig. 1 blue, olive and cyan). While the affinity of P. smintheus var. niger to these eastern subspecies and not to P. s. behrii or northern and western subspecies (P. s. sternitzkyi McDunnough, 1937, P. s. olympianna Burdick, 1941 and P. s. yukonensis Eisner, 1969) is confident, it is more challenging to assign it to one of the eastern taxa using the specimens we sequenced. Tentatively, in accord with the nuclear genome tree ( Fig. 1), we place P. smintheus var. niger as a junior subjective synonym of Parnassius smintheus smintheus E. Doubleday, 1847 , and hypothesize that its type locality may have been incorrect. Sequencing of additional specimens across the range, including those from around the Donner Pass area in Sierra Co., California, is needed to determine its locality and synonymy more precisely. Our current genomic analysis reveals that Parnassius smintheus maximus Bryk & Eisner, 1937 (type locality in USA: Montana, Fergus Co.) is closely related to the nominotypical P. smintheus ( Fig. 1 blue), and it is possible that P. smintheus var. niger is synonymous with the former taxon, or all light on the situation, we avoid replacing the name P. smintheus maximus with P. smintheus niger .