Suniana Evans, 1934

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2024, New taxa of butterflies supported by genomic analysis, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 12 (3), pp. 1-63 : 41

Suniana Evans, 1934 is a subgenus of Potanthus Scudder, 1872

Genomic phylogeny of the tribe Taractrocerini Voss, 1952 highlights genetic closeness of three genera: Potanthus Scudder, 1872 (type species Hesperia omaha Edwards, 1863 ), Ocybadistes Heron, 1894 (type species Ocybadistes walkeri Heron, 1894 ), and Suniana Evans, 1934 (type species Pamphila lascivia Rosenstock, 1885 ) ( Fig. 44 green, blue, and olive), e.g., COI barcodes of Potanthus and Suniana differ by 5.9–6.2% (39–41 bp). Genetic differentiation between Potanthus and Suniana is smaller than that for most genera. Furthermore, they are close in appearance and are not immediately recognizable in the field. Therefore, we proposed to treat Suniana Evans, 1934 , stat. nov. as a subgenus of Potanthus Scudder, 1872 . Presently, we retain Ocybadistes as a genus because it is stronger separated genetically from Potanthus than Suniana , but it may be that the former is also a subgenus of the latter, a question to be addressed with a comprehensive species-level phylogeny of the group. Suniana was morphologically differentiated from Potanthus mainly by the flattened antennal club (a character shared with Ocybadistes , which is not its closest relative) and divided uncus (in Potanthus , the shape of uncus is variable, and some species currently placed in this genus have bifid uncus) (Evans 1949). Thus, although Suniana is a morphologically compact group of currently three species, it falls among other such groups in Potanthus and Ocybadistes . Potanthus encompasses about 40 species, some of which are phenotypically more different from others than Suniana . Therefore, including three Suniana species in Potanthus to achieve a more internally consistent classification into genera seems advantageous.