Chlosyne flavula blackmorei Pelham, 2008

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 : 6

Chlosyne flavula blackmorei Pelham, 2008 and Chlosyne palla sterope (W. H. Edwards, 1870) may be sympatric in British Columbia, Canada

We proposed to treat Chlosyne flavula (W. Barnes & McDunnough, 1918) (type locality USA: Colorado, Garfield Co., Glenwood Springs) as a species distinct from Chlosyne palla (Boisduval, 1852) (type locality in USA: California, Plumas Co.) based on notable genetic differentiation and limited gene exchange between these two taxa (Zhang et al. 2023d). However, the ultimate evidence of distinction at the species level comes from finding two taxa in sympatry. Genomic sequencing of additional specimens from the Pacific Northwest reveals that the two species may be sympatric in Osoyoos, British Columbia, Canada, where a specimen of Chlosyne flavula blackmorei Pelham, 2008 (type locality Canada: British Columbia , Lytton) (NVG-24014H10, Fig. 1a) and a specimen of Chlosyne palla sterope (W. H. Edwards, 1870) (type locality in USA: Oregon, Wasco Co.) (NVG-24015A09, Fig. 1b) were collected by J. K. Jacob five days apart. However, the locality “Osoyoos” specified on the labels may refer to a general area only. Thus, further genomic sequencing to include various localities, especially from Idaho, will shed more light on the question about the sympatry of C. palla and C. flavula .

In the nuclear genomic tree, these two specimens from “Osoyoos” are placed in different clades corresponding to their species ( Fig. 2 blue and red, highlighted yellow). Moreover, all additional specimens we sequenced are confidently attributed to their distinct clades by species and, within each species clade, by subspecies and their localities. Species clades are supported by bootstrap values of 100%, and no hybrids are observed. These additional results confirm that Melitaea sterope is a subspecies of C. palla and not of Chlosyne acastus (W. H. Edwards, 1874) (type locality in USA: Utah, probably Utah Co.) (Zhang et al. 2022c), and that C. flavula is a species distinct from C. palla .