Sabera tenebricosa (Mabille, 1904), 2024

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 : 46

Sabera tenebricosa (Mabille, 1904) is a species distinct from Sabera kolbei ( Ribbe, 1899)

Telicota tenebricosa Mabille, 1904 ( type locality in New Guinea) ( Fig. 47b) is currently treated as a subspecies of Sabera kolbei ( Ribbe, 1899) , comb. nov. ( type locality in New Britain) ( Fig. 47a), formerly in the genus Mimene Joicey & Talbot, 1917 ( type species Ismene miltias Kirsch, 1877 ) (Evans 1949). Genomic analysis reveals that while T. tenebricosa is indeed sister to S. kolbei and thus belongs to the same genus Sabera Swinhoe, 1908 ( type species Hesperia caesina Hewitson, 1866 ), the two taxa are genetically differentiated at the species level ( Fig. 44), e.g., their COI barcodes differ by 6.4% (42 bp). Therefore, we propose that Sabera tenebricosa (Mabille, 1904) , comb. nov., stat. rest. is a species distinct from Sabera kolbei ( Ribbe, 1899) , stat. nov.