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.