Erebia (Erebia) pawloskii Ménétriés, 1859

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2025, Advancing butterfly systematics through genomic analysis, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 12 (5), pp. 1-201 : 8-9

Erebia (Erebia) pawloskii Ménétriés, 1859 is confirmed as a species distinct from Erebia theano (Tauscher, 1806) and Erebia stubbendorfii Ménétriés, 1847

Nuclear genome phylogeny reveals that Erebia (Erebia) theano (Tauscher, 1806) (type locality in Altai Mts.) ( Fig. 3a brown), Erebia (Erebia) stubbendorfii Ménétriés, 1847 (type locality Russia: Kansk) ( Fig. 3a olive), and Erebia (Erebia) pawloskii Ménétriés, 1859 (type locality in Russia: Sakha) ( Fig. 3a purple, blue, magenta, green, dark blue, and cyan, with the nominate in blue), form strongly supported (100% ultrafast bootstrap ( Minh et al. 2013)) clades genetically differentiated at the species level, e.g., their Fst values are: 0.36 ( E. theano and E. stubbendorfii ), 0.36 ( E. theano and E. pawloskii ), and 0.28 ( E. stubbendorfii and E. pawloskii ). Therefore, genomic analysis supports the three distinct species hypothesis ( Lukhtanov and Lukhtanov 1994; Gorbunov 2001) and suggests that the name stubbendorfii should not be applied to E. pawloskii . Curiously, mitochondrial genome phylogeny is different, and reveals two major haplotypes for these species, split by geography: the Old World haplotype (including the North Slope of Alaska, USA) and the New World haplotype (the rest of Alaska, Canada, and the US) ( Fig. 3b). Similar evolutionary scenarios, likely resulting from mitochondrial introgression, are known in other butterfly groups, such as Junonia Hübner, [1819] (Gemmell and Marcus 2015) , and offer a cautionary lesson against relying solely on mitochondrial data (e.g., COI barcodes) to address species delimitation.

from Erebia (Erebia) pawloskii Ménétriés, 1859

Originally proposed as a subspecies of Erebia (Erebia) theano (Tauscher, 1806) (type locality in Altai Mts.), and currently treated as a subspecies of Erebia (Erebia) pawloskii Ménétriés, 1859 (type locality in Russia: Sakha), Erebia theano demmia Warren, 1936 (type locality in USA: Colorado, San Juan Mountains) is genetically differentiated from them at the species level ( Fig. 3a red), e.g., Fst / Gmin statistics for the phylogenetically closest pair ( E. theano demmia and E. pawloskii ) are 0.34/0.015. Therefore, we propose that Erebia (Erebia) demmia B. Warren, 1936 , stat. nov. is a species distinct from Erebia (Erebia) pawloskii Ménétriés, 1859 .