Telegonus erana (Evans, 1952) Zhang & Cong & Shen & Song & Grishin, 2025

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 : 105

Telegonus erana (Evans, 1952) and Telegonus meretrix ( Hewitson, 1876) are species distinct from Telegonus chiriquensis Staudinger, 1875

Genomic analysis reveals that Telegonus chiriquensis erana (Evans, 1952) (type locality in Ecuador: Balzapamba) and Telegonus chiriquensis meretrix ( Hewitson, 1876) (type locality in Ecuador) currently treated as subspecies of Telegonus chiriquensis Staudinger, 1875 (type locality in Panama: Chiriquí, lectotype sequenced as NVG-24028C04) are not monophyletic with it and belong to two different clades being strongly differentiated from it genetically ( Fig. 61): e.g., COI barcodes in the closest pair ( T. chiriquensis erana and T. chiriquensis chiriquensis ) differ by 4.1% (27 bp). Telegonus chiriquensis meretrix belongs to a different species group and is closer related to Telegonus parmenides ( Stoll, 1781) , stat. rest. and not to Telegonus creteus (Cramer, 1780) as the other two taxa ( Fig. 61). Telegonus chiriquensis meretrix is characterized by the blue area on the dorsal forewing reaching the discal brown band (especially along the costal margin) and broad ventral forewing bands. These characters are shared with Telegonus cretatus Hayward, 1939 (type locality also in Ecuador) from the same species group, among several other species, rather than with T. chiriquensis , which has reduced blue-green bases of the forewings. Evans (1952) misidentified E. meretrix in part, and except for three females from Ecuador (with broad blue wing bases), other specimens (with narrow blue-green bases) belong to other species (one described below as new), indeed, closely related to T. chiriquensis . For these reasons, we propose that Telegonus erana (Evans, 1952) , stat. nov. and Telegonus meretrix ( Hewitson, 1876) , stat. rest. are species distinct from Telegonus chiriquensis Staudinger, 1875 .